by Mari Saat
She had dreamt that three flags fluttered on the sledging hill at her kindergarten: one was red, one was red with little light blue waves, and one had three stripes – blue, black, white. The last of the three fluttered highest of all, above the others. When she’d woken up she’d told her mother about it and asked what the funny flag was, the dark one – but her mother didn’t know. Shortly afterwards the Estonians’ Singing Revolution had begun and they’d started to raise that very flag and Sofia found out what flag it was. She’d then had a feeling of déjà vu, a feeling that they were raising their flag partly for her, so that she would be able to fulfil her destiny… Fortunately at the time she hadn’t been able to explain it to anyone, and later she was astute enough to hold her tongue.
The Estonians really were different from the Russians. That much she had realised when she’d gone on an excursion to an open-air museum: there was a farmhouse without a chimney stack, a chimneyless dwelling, ancient… It must have been a conventional farmer’s home but one wall incorporated a log as thick as Sofia was tall. The log, roots and all, was part of the structure, and the flooring of the barn-cum-farmhouse was broad limestone slabs… In some ways it was clearly farmhouse-like with its tiny windows, low doorways and high sills, yet it had something eternal about it like the castles of long ago. Russian houses were built without foundations. When she went to St Petersburg once, they’d passed Russian villages along the roadside, houses closely packed one against the other and an older house, more twisted than the rest. Later her mother had told her that this was because the houses had no foundations. Where could people get stone for foundations? Russia was pure earth, there was no stone, whereas in Estonia there was stone aplenty and nothing but… To Sofia, this fact made the Estonians different from the Russians: the Estonians were here in their own land like a tiny sharp thorn wedged into the ground and they did the things they did in the way they had always done them; the Russians however seemed to be spread loosely across the surface of the earth, always ready to be on the move like the Ivan of Russian fairy tales who lay about on the stove and rode around on it… Ivan was lazy. The Estonians thought Russians were lazy but that wasn’t true. Or even if it was, then Estonians were no better for their busyness – they were just different. They were brusquer, clearer, more punctilious, whereas the Russians were more fluid, more discursive… Sofia couldn’t say which was better. Her mother was lovely – so round and buxom, like a gladiolus… Perhaps things seemed that way to Sofia because her mother liked gladioli. She always tried to give some to Sofia on 1 September to take to her teacher on the first day of school, although Sofia had now finally managed to get it through to her that it was no longer the custom to take flowers to your teacher on 1 September… Sofia liked to see them in a vase at home though; they were like an embodiment of her mother, white and pink gladioli… Only they always began wilting from below, just as the last blooms were emerging from the top. Time seemed to flow through their stems, and they had to cut off the wilted blooms at the bottom to persuade time that the gladioli were still flowering, otherwise they wilted as they bloomed…
She feared for her mother. Even though she’d found herself a new job, she didn’t seem to be at all happy about it. In fact she seemed rather dispirited. She went to work in the evenings and came back late when it was almost night. She had to be looking after someone seriously ill to be working lates for the family. The family drove her home late in the evening, so they were considerate, and from what Mum said the pay was decent. Sofia had already been fitted with braces on her upper teeth, there’d now be a break before the next big payment, and it wouldn’t be so big this time. Most of the money had already been paid, so there seemed to be more money for food than before. But it seemed that nursing the sick patient was grinding her mother down. Sofia would have gone with her to help, but her mother said it wouldn’t be right – in a strange flat… If Mum could go back to her old job in electronics, she’d been happy then, although tired sometimes… But now it felt as though she might wilt away and cheating time wouldn’t be an option…
“Why do you always go around with that glum look on your face?” asked Rael.
Rael was the type of girl who always came right out with what she was thinking, and sometimes spoke even more bluntly than that. That was why everyone – pupils and teachers alike – thought her nosey. But Sofia had learned to answer her by paying no heed – as if she hadn’t noticed that she could have taken offence at Rael’s questions. In her view she could talk to Rael freely if she ignored her argumentative manner. She had discovered for herself that Rael was often quite happy to say and ask things that other people shied away from, as if she were picking a fight, but if Sofia ignored it, Rael was completely normal again.
“What do you mean a glum look?” Sofia asked.
“Well, the kind of look that says you’re three months pregnant, as if you’re about to faint – it’s plastered all over your face the whole time… Sucking pieces of bread doesn’t appeal to me at all – could it be perhaps that you just don’t have anything else to eat?”
“So what if I haven’t?” Sofia asked in reply, unexpectedly bristling.
For the first time she had doubts whether it was always right to answer Rael directly. She realised only too well that Rael was scornfully asking, “Got nothing else to eat, have you?” But she was tired – she was tired of the pussyfooting around – about why she wouldn’t ever go anywhere, anywhere that had any hint of money about it, whether it was the disco, or the school supplies shop, because she dreaded the others buying anything, albeit the smallest cheapest thing… how would she… what could she say to explain why this or that wasn’t to her liking?
“I have nothing else to eat,” she said and now suddenly, abruptly and brusquely, she felt as if she’d cast all the bitterness of the last few months into that one sentence, and it surprised her how much of it there was and how it dissipated. “Mum was laid off, she was sacked because there’s a crisis in electronics – over half of them there were laid off and she hasn’t found another proper job, and now we’re living like they did in the Leningrad Blockade or in the Great Northern War – Estonians went hungry in the Great Northern War. They ate moss because there wasn’t even any bread!”
There were no words to express the pleasure she felt as she peevishly unburdened herself to Rael in bitter, accusing tones.
But Rael was neither cowed nor offended. Her eyes widened in bewilderment and she said slowly, “Hell, there’s no way I could do that… I tried to go on a diet once, but the next day I stuffed myself so much I threw up… And I don’t want bulimia, thank you… But there’s no way I could do that…”
“What would you do then,” asked Sofia, as caustically as before, “if you just didn’t have any money at all?”
“I don’t know… I guess I’d steal…”
“Get caught and they’d throw you in jail.”
“Well let them. At least you get fed in jail. The food budget for jails is bigger than the one for us in school. It was on TV once. Compared to jails the schools budget is mingy… So what are you living on then?”
“Oh well, things aren’t as bad as they were,” said Sofia.
She’d calmed down now all of a sudden, perhaps because Rael wasn’t making fun or mocking her. Instead she was putting herself in Sofia’s shoes, imagining what it would be like to go hungry, as if she felt a genuine practical interest. Sofia even felt embarrassed because she’d overdramatised her current situation. She explained that actually, things weren’t so bad any more because Mum had found something “on the hush-hush”. She was nursing someone and got home late in the evening when the patient’s family came home from work, but they got home very late, they must have the type of job where they had to work late and at the weekends, and because of it Mum had to work the weekends and late into the evenings too, so when she got home she did nothing but mumble and moan, wouldn’t talk about anything, it was as if she were fit to drop… Could nursing a sick person real
ly have that effect on you? She hadn’t been able to tell anyone about it, and now she suddenly felt as if Rael was her only friend and advisor.
“And how,” exclaimed Rael, “that’s something I do know first-hand!”
It now transpired that although Rael’s parents were prosperous, or enormously well off compared to Sofia’s mother, or at least should have been judging by how Rael dressed or the hints she dropped about the places she’d been to, and the time she spent puzzling over the ones she hadn’t visited yet… and the type of music player she owned and even her mobile – only three people in their class had mobile phones, for goodness’ sake… and she apparently even had a computer at home. There was no need for her to queue to use the class computer; she could sit in front of one as long as she wanted. She explained that she had to nurse a sick patient twice a week. It definitely wasn’t as bad as Sofia’s mum’s job, because firstly the patient wasn’t a stranger, but her own grandma who was very old because she’d had Rael’s dad so late – when she was past forty, and he was her only child, so she had no grandchildren other than Rael. And that was a real drag… a real nurse actually visited her separately anyway, every day, and grandma wasn’t bedridden, she could move about under her own steam indoors and Rael didn’t really have to do much more than visit twice a week for around an hour at a time and read the newspaper to her, sometimes make a pot of tea and wash a few cups up. Occasionally the nurse had just left and had already read her the morning paper. She couldn’t read it herself because she was almost completely blind… She was more or less all there upstairs, but deadly dull and got right on her nerves. But she had to go twice a week and mind her manners while she was at it. So Rael understood Sofia’s mother very well. She had no choice because her parents said her grandma loved her such a lot and she was the only one, and because she got a grand a month for visiting and she wouldn’t be able to manage without the money as she always needed so much stuff…
“Do you reckon that’s an honest thing to do?” she asked Sofia. “They pay me a grand a month so I’ll go round, but I mustn’t tell her that that’s why I’m going, instead I have to say that I go because I want to – because I love grandma so much.”
“I don’t know,” said Sofia, unable at that moment to think about such a complex question because her head was reeling at the very thought of the possibility – a grand a month – two lovely pinkish-grey five-hundred-kroon notes just for reading the newspaper to your grandma twice a week. Why didn’t she have a grandma? Actually she had had one, somewhere in faraway Siberia, but she’d been dead for several years and even if she were alive it was highly unlikely that anyone would have paid Sofia to read her the newspaper – you needed to have rich parents for a start. Several factors had to coincide: you had to be an only grandchild with rich parents and a half-blind grandma…
“It’s not that it’s a complete lie, because I do love her a lot, it’s just that I’d love her better from a distance… Apparently I have nothing to do, whereas they think that they’re busy the entire time and that I’ve nothing better to do but mooch about and read the paper… And everything she says I’ve heard before. She just has to open her mouth and I know what the next word is going to be. It’s like I’ve downloaded all her stories a hundred times and my hard drive’s full.”
Sofia was still unable to follow her complaint fully and empathise with her…
“If I could earn as much as that I’d be round there four times a week, perhaps every day,” she said – and calculated that if she visited perhaps every day for a couple of hours she’d still have time to study late in the evening… And she wouldn’t be such a burden on her mum! If she spent half of the money and put half of it aside, that would be five hundred kroons a month. She could gradually pay back the cost of the braces… When summer came, she thought, she’d definitely try and find a chance to earn some money as a paper girl. Some of them were even younger than she was – perhaps ten years old. Or might she get some gardening work?
“Yeah, wealth isn’t shared equally in this world,” said Rael, not in jest or with any irony, but as if giving the matter some consideration – whether of the injustice in the world or of the possibility of finding a way out was not clear. “I could give you half, but you mustn’t let on – I’m always short of money…”
“What?” exclaimed Sofia, astonished. “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I was only thinking that it would be a cushy number – not that I wanted to do it. I was just thinking that it’d still leave time for studying,” and she was embarrassed that Rael might now think that she envied Rael her wealth, and the one in a million opportunity that Rael had… She felt so small and hateful. She felt so beggarly…
“That’s not what I was thinking either,” said Rael, “I was just wondering whether there might be room for us to go halves. We could visit together and you could read the paper and I’d do something else – I could make the tea for us all maybe… It’s just that I’d have to go too, they wouldn’t agree to me not going… You see, I’m my grandma’s heir, or that’s what they tell me at least, that it’s my name that’s in her will, and that I’ll get her flat as soon as I’m eighteen… Or when grandma dies anyway. But by then it’ll be high time to move out, when I’m eighteen I mean, because my parents are pretty much impossible to live with as it is… But if you did the reading I could at least put my headphones on and listen to something. The time wouldn’t go to waste… although going halves would make things a bit tight moneywise…”
Even so, Rael approached Sofia the next day and said, “Hey, I reckon we should give it a try – let’s go together and I’ll say that I’ve got a sore throat and you’ll be doing the reading – and I can put my headphones on and if she asks me something, you can just give me a nudge… that way I can ease you into her good books and then we can split the money!”
“But five hundred’s not enough for you, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. I was thinking about it all day yesterday. A whole grand isn’t enough for me either, about halfway through the month I tend to get down to my last penny and have to go and cadge it – I’ll just have to do a lot more pestering. It’d be no hardship to them to shell out another grand a month, it’s just that Dad thinks that money should be earned… Because he lived really frugally during the Russian time, at least that’s what he’s always rubbing my nose in anyway…”
Before Sofia visited Rael’s grandma for the first time, she dreamt she was sitting on a park bench next to an elderly lady, thin, once perhaps fairly tall, but now with a stoop, her hair as white and sparkling as snow swept into a tall bun on the back of her head, and her eyes sparkling like pieces of the morning sky through which the sun was gleaming. So much so that it hurt to look into them. And with one hand she held on her lap a small black puppy which occasionally whimpered and wriggled and was eager to be off, but in the other she held a cardboard punnet of wild strawberries. The strawberries were tiny, slightly squishy yet slightly dried, and she offered them to Sofia…
Rael’s grandma was just like that, except she didn’t have a puppy and she didn’t proffer any strawberries and you could look as long as you wanted into her eyes – as grey-blue as a murky sky – but you would find no curious sparkle to them…
“This is Sofia,” Rael explained to her grandma, “we sit at the same desk and she’s a really good student, nearly always gets just about full marks. I’ve brought her with me today to read the paper because I’ve got a bad throat and a bit of a cough…” and she coughed twice in evidence, “otherwise there’d be no one to read you the papers…”
“Oh it’s marvellous how you always worry so about your grandma,” said Grandma, although Sofia thought she detected something of a knowing tone. Was there not perhaps a slight jibe in there? Had she seen through their plan?
And to Sofia she said, “Ah, so this must be Sofia…” with a hint of coldness, as if she already knew what to think of her… and then added in businesslike fashion, “Right then, perhaps we s
hould make a start… What first: Maaleht? Or perhaps Äripäev?”
Rael’s grandma had a large round table in the centre of the room piled high with papers and magazines – the older ones underneath and the newer ones on top, each in a separate stack. There were Maaleht and Äripäev, Newsweek, Nedelya, Financial Times, National Geographic and Der Spiegel…
“I don’t read the dailies,” she explained importantly, “there isn’t the time – and who’d ever get through reading me that lot. I have to listen to the news on the radio or the telly. If I put my ear up close, I can make it out all right…”
It became apparent that she didn’t have to read articles at random, instead Grandma had sifted through the papers and magazines with a magnifying glass, reading the titles and introductions in the largest type. All she wanted read were the articles she’d selected. Sofia started with a Russian article: “…last week the Russian securities market was again seized with panic …” she read and sneaked a look out of the corner of her eye in Grandma’s direction. At first, Grandma appeared to be very pleased – she nodded from time to time, her eyes half-closed and a slight smile on her lips. Gradually the nods became deeper and her breathing slower – was that her snoring?
Sofia suddenly stopped reading without being asked, but Grandma immediately said, “Read on, read on, speak up a bit!”