by Mari Saat
“Most probably, the interest rate will be held at 6.5% at the next meeting of the US Federal Reserve Board on 19 December. What Alan Greenspan says is important…”
Grandma’s eyes had gradually closed again, but this time her head was resting on the headrest of the armchair and she really was snoring gently. But it could be deceptive, like a trap, it wasn’t worth trusting to it…
“If the issue is the need to tackle inflation …” she continued.
“Bullshit!” shouted Grandma suddenly, almost making Sofia jump off her chair.
“Surely you must see that oil prices are so high that Greenspan himself has lost the plot! You read well but what you’re reading is bullshit…”
Sofia didn’t understand whether Grandma was reproaching her for reading such “bullshit”… She remembered the story that Genghis Khan had slain messengers who brought him bad news – had broken their spines…
“Don’t worry,” said Grandma as if in encouragement, “whatever rubbish your eyes are reading, just let it all come flowing out of your mouth, otherwise if you read quietly in a corner you’ll just drink it all in yourself. Let’s try Maaleht instead!”
In Maaleht, an Estonian agricultural weekly, Grandma had highlighted a story about foot-and-mouth disease. Sofia found it bizarre that a grandma who looked so small, with a long, thin face and the daintiest of long fingers, and had lived in a city all her life had any interest in Maaleht at all, let alone in foot-and-mouth disease…
“The epidemic has resulted in pyres of thousands of animals all over Europe,” Sofia read. “Culling animals because of foot-and-mouth is evidently the most effective and quickest method. Vaccinating would create a situation where animals carrying the virus may be left alive. A vaccinated animal can remain a carrier for up to one year. To prevent this confusion most countries in the world have imposed their own import regulations to the effect that countries with which they have reciprocal trade relations must not vaccinate livestock against foot-and-mouth disease. That is the requirement in the European Union. If the situation were otherwise, the European Union would not be able to compete with cheaper meat products from the United States. The culling of infectious animals is the most economically effective approach: if we started vaccinating animals, we would wipe out the export opportunities for Estonia’s meat and dairy products for the next three to four years…”
“What an abomination!” Grandma suddenly exclaimed in a piercing voice. “They’d kill their own mothers. Just for better opportunities for competition. Why do we, the Europeans, have to be at war with the Americans – why on earth do we have to produce more meat than we eat? It’s madness. Why are we wearing our land out? The Estonians are becoming as ridiculous as the rest of Europe!”
Then she leant towards Sofia and said quietly as if disclosing a great conspiratorial secret, “Foot-and-mouth isn’t generally fatal, it’s like the flu for humans – it can be cured if you look after the animal. Stalin himself cured foot-and-mouth, and even nowadays they cure it in Russian animals… but not for love of the animals – no – it’s for their meat, there’s not enough meat in Russia, not enough to go round… Everything’s run on greed!” Her voice had now swelled with a stern and piercing tone, and then just as suddenly it faded…
Sofia wondered whether to continue reading, but then Grandma said quietly, as if in a ghost story, just like the voice in the dream earlier, sending chills up Sofia’s spine, “This world is going to perdition, going to perdition… the deserts are coming… the world over… deserts, deserts…”
“Why deserts?” asked Sofia almost in a whisper because she found this hoarse prediction so frightening. Grandma was indeed listening – there was no deafness there now.
“Because,” she said suddenly goading, almost knowingly, “deserts come from evil, from evil thoughts, the earth cannot tolerate it. The earth is in pain – deserts are scorch marks on the face of the earth… All humans, all peoples, all of them are burning the earth with their devilry… The cows are earth’s teats; through cows the earth feeds people with its milk, the cows are holy, cows are the earth’s motherhood, cows must not be molested, but look what man has done to them – they tend them in small pens… And when they have worn them out they slaughter them… Look how many evils the Americans have committed! Like when they killed the bison in their droves! Why do you think that was? Just so that the Indians wouldn’t have anything to eat any more and would starve to death… they’ve still to pay for it… but the rest of humanity’s no better – the Germans, the Russians… they grow up on milk but kill each other… Not even the Jews are blameless, otherwise Hitler wouldn’t have been given the power to thrash them… What power would Hitler have had otherwise…”
Then she added, suddenly quiet, knowingly sneering, “I shouldn’t be talking like this… I’m not a Jew, I care little for religion…”
Sofia did not know quite what to make of that last sentence; for some reason she asked instead, “But what about the Estonians? There’s so few of them?”
“The Estonians?” said Grandma slowly, and asked, almost suspiciously, “What have you got to do with the Estonians?”
Sofia felt her face reddening – she didn’t know if it was because Grandma had realised somehow that Sofia wasn’t Estonian – did she still have a Russian accent then? Or had Rael told her? But Sofia sensed that no one had to tell Grandma anything – that she could see everything for herself when she stared intently like that – she could even see her secret…
However, Grandma did not require any more replies from her, she merely said, slowly and knowingly, “The Estonians… the little ruffians…” and sniped as if with a knife, “just look what they did to Sigtuna!”
The whole conversation drove Sofia into a state of utter confusion. But the thing that dismayed her most was that the earth might be in pain; could it be true that somewhere beneath their feet, under the tarmac, there might be a great being, immeasurably larger than an elephant or a dinosaur, who really might groan and suffer at the hand of the tiny creatures that were forever plaguing it?
“What did the Estonians do to Sigtuna?” she asked Rael on the way home.
“To what?” asked Rael.
“Sigtuna?” Sofia repeated, falteringly – she wasn’t sure whether she’d remembered the word correctly.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Rael said, “what makes you think they did something to whatever it was?”
“Your grandma said, ‘look what the little ruffians did to Sigtuna’… That’s it, and by ‘the little ruffians’ she meant the Estonians…”
“Oh well, if that’s what Grandma said then they definitely did something dreadful to whoever it was… broke his neck… or disembowelled him, if it was a really long time ago… They disembowelled a priest once – the Estonians were no angels, you know… Grandma takes in everything she reads, and remembers anything she’s read, even if it was a hundred years ago…”
Perhaps the history teacher would know, although Sofia wasn’t sure that she’d remembered the name Sigtuna correctly – could it have been “Sigulda”? She’d heard of Sigulda – it was in Latvia…
“Do you believe everything your grandma says?” she ventured again.
“Such as?”
“Well, for example, the idea that the earth is actually alive? And that it could be transformed into desert… Made into desert by bad ideas, that bad ideas make deserts grow?”
“Ah, Grandma’s been telling you that load of old rubbish then!”
“But haven’t we just been learning about deserts growing all the time?”
“Well that’s because, because there are simply too many people… That’s why we need to irrigate and cut down the forests… You shouldn’t believe everything, you know… Anyhow, Dad says that anything might happen, it’s just as likely that a comet will smash into the earth and we’ll all be for it, but we can’t live as if that’s actually going to happen – if we’re scared of everything then we’ll never get anythin
g done. Much better to live as well as you can, for as long as you can.”
Rael was right, of course. But if her grandma was telling the truth and everything was as she said, after all, that was how it had sounded when she’d said it, as if there were no doubt about it, in a voice that sounded like a messenger from the bosom of the earth, gloomily reporting what the earth had to say…
Sofia was suddenly overcome with distress: if it really was true, then were they and their lives so pointless, what was the purpose of her having braces so that she didn’t have to spend her life going round with crooked teeth and her mouth half-closed… What was the point of it? And yet Grandma’s story also offered some solace because if they were so pointless, then it wouldn’t really be of any import whether she became president or not, much less president of the little ruffians… There was no one in the world who was good, no good nation – even the tiny ones had inflicted harm on someone and if they hadn’t, then it was only because they hadn’t had the strength – and if there were a God in heaven… What if he really did exist? If he did, then why did he allow people to do harm to the earth? What was the earth guilty of? All it did was spin. It span on its course – why did it have to suffer? Mum’s friend Lyuda, the lovely, plump, ever-immaculate Lyuda had a dog, a small beige long-haired little dog that Lyuda always described as almost a full pedigree Pekinese. The little dog had caught fleas once and kept scratching itself and whining. “Where could he have picked them up?” Lyuda had wailed with an aggrieved expression, lips pursed and her fat soft cheeks a-wobble, and why did the poor animal have to suffer like that… Why, oh why do the innocent have to suffer?
That night in bed she couldn’t sleep – she had itches here and there as if suddenly being bitten by fleas herself. Eventually she fell into an oppressive, fitful half-sleep – it appeared to her that the earth was full of tiny people trampling its round belly and gnawing at it and whining snidely and jostling and tearing at each other, but the earth kept on spinning beneath them. It wasn’t really a dream, more of an anguished feeling, and it prevented her from nodding off… Some time later she began to feel the anguish mounting, gaining strength, and she suddenly noticed that she was not in fact asleep and that the anguish was real, audible from the adjoining room – that meant that Mum had come home without her noticing, and she was now asleep and moaning in her sleep as was usual of late… But Sofia was so horrified that she ran into her mother’s room and shook her.
“Mum, are you ill? Are you ill?”
Mum woke up with difficulty.
“Two hundred and fifty…” she murmured.
“What do you mean – two hundred and fifty?” Sofia almost screamed, and shook her mother again.
“I, I don’t know. It’s nothing…” her mother said, more clearly now.
“What’s wrong?” Sofia demanded, she felt so awful, she had the feeling that somewhere deep beneath their feet, under the building, deep in the heart of the earth something might suddenly happen, that everything might suddenly crumble to dust…
“Nothing,” said Mum, “it must just have been an incubus. An incubus might come if you sleep on your back. They throw themselves on you and try to smother you… you just have to roll over…”
“Mum, can I come in with you? I can’t sleep, I want to come in with you, there’s room for me,” begged Sofia and pushed her mum towards the wall.
“What are you doing?” her mother pushed her away. “You’re a big girl now… I’m not clean… caught something from the patient… Not OK…” but in the end when she saw Sofia sitting on the end of the bed and not going away, she said, “OK, let’s go into the kitchen, we’ll make some sugar water, tomorrow’s Sunday, we can have a lie-in in the morning…”
Sofia felt suddenly better and content. Sunday mornings were the best mornings – she could sleep and she knew that Mum wouldn’t be visiting the patient in the evening, so the strange family would have to look after him themselves… And the sugar water that she sipped was like something very clean and light that gradually, comfortingly spread through her… As if it made everything as smooth as glass…
“Mum,” she asked, “is the earth, our planet, alive?”
“I don’t know,” said Mum. She was quiet for a while – perhaps she was thinking about something else entirely – but then suddenly she added, “We Russians call the earth Matushka Zemlya, as if it were a mother to us, a good woman … So for us it’s as if it’s alive… Or is that what we say about Russia?”
When Natalya woke in the morning and looked in Sofia’s room, Sofia was curled up asleep in bed, hugging a globe. Natalya was surprised – Sofia had cuddly toys, a large black bear and a small, light brown cub, that she hadn’t cuddled for years, presumably from embarrassment that she was too big for them, but she would still arrange them at the head of her bed in the day and by the wall at night where they would watch over her from their station between the wall and her pillow. The bears would have been much nicer to hug; the globe, although smooth, was hard and had an angular handle… but she didn’t dare take it from Sofia’s arms. She’d wake up in her own good time, today was Sunday and she could sleep…
It was on her third visit to read to Rael’s grandma that Sofia found a stern-faced man with round eyes suddenly standing before her. Sofia hadn’t noticed how he had got into the flat or even the room, because she was tied up with an English article. The text was oddly worded and interesting at that. She didn’t understand all of it, of course, but as she read, a general picture formed naturally in her mind, and it was accompanied by photos that she’d have liked to look at and read the captions. She wasn’t able to because she had to read the article – and keep an occasional eye on Grandma as well, but now all of a sudden a black wall loomed between the two of them. He was a burly man, dressed in black, with black hair and strict-looking, bulging brown eyes that looked fixedly at her and said, “Ah, so you must be Sofia then?”
Sofia nodded because she’d lost the power of speech.
“And you’re the one working while Rael’s asleep?” he continued sternly.
“N-no,” stammered Sofia, although unjustifiable guilt brought her voice back, “Rael’s making tea in the kitchen…”
“Ah, Rael’s making tea in the kitchen, is she?” mocked the man. “Come and see how she’s getting on with it!”
He took Sofia by the hand and dragged her behind him into the kitchen. Rael was sprawled on the sofa, arms dangling, headphones on, eyes closed and a happy expression on her face.
The man removed her headphones and Rael sat up quick as a flash, snatched the headphones back and clasped the music player and the headphones tightly to her chest.
“Sofia said you’re making tea in the kitchen – making tea like this, are you?” the man asked, now scoffing.
“Yes,” grumbled Rael in an injured tone, “in principle I am, but it’s a bit early yet…”
“Ah, in principle you are, is that it? Well carry on with it then!” yelled the man, pointing at Rael under her nose. “Can you not get it into your skull that if you let someone else read while you make the tea, then you’ll carry on making the tea and be a kitchen girl all your life! You’ll throw away everything I’ve earned! Just you wait and see!”
“But I’m not just making tea,” whined Rael, “I’m listening to my music too! I have to keep in touch with the tracks! If I’m not up to the minute, what will I talk to other people about? Who’ll ever talk to me?”
“That music player!” shouted the man, and made a threatening movement that made Rael cower protectively over the player again. “Music players should all be smashed, destroyed; you’ll drive yourselves doolally with all that listening. The beat makes your brain soft. You’ll see, when you’re a deaf kitchen hand… or… or a tramp hunting through bins for food.”
He then turned abruptly to Sofia and asked, unexpectedly quietly but sternly, “Tell me, Sofia, what do you want to be?”
Sofia suddenly felt herself blush, her ears tingle and a th
rottling feeling somewhere deep in her throat…
“I…” she said, “I want to be an orthodontist!”
“A what?” the man asked, bemused.
“An orthodontist,” Sofia repeated, now confident, and explained that an orthodontist was someone who corrected people’s teeth and jawbones, and that it was very important because a narrow bite could put so much pressure on the jaw joints that they stiffen, leaving the person unable to open their mouth any more, or only able to open their mouth slightly so that they’ll have to eat only soup through a straw and put thin slices of things in their mouths, and it wasn’t an easy thing at all to become a good orthodontist, you had to be good at 3-D visualisation, 3-D visualisation was really important; you had to have very good spatial awareness… She explained it all quickly and enthusiastically – everything that her lovely doctor-orthodontist had explained to her while working on Sofia’s mouth, and Sofia felt that being an orthodontist really was her dream in life.
“Spatial awareness…” the man repeated thoughtfully, “do you have good enough spatial awareness?”
“I don’t know…” said Sofia, now somewhat perplexed, coming back down to earth.
She noticed that Grandma had also come to the kitchen door and was listening and eyeing her sharply, and Sofia again felt the throbbing and clenching in her chest overwhelming her because she sensed that Grandma knew she was lying… But at the same time she also felt defiant – after all why shouldn’t she want to be an orthodontist? In the end it was up to her to decide, wasn’t it?
“Wasn’t he just furious!” said Rael the next day at school.
“Was that your dad?” asked Sofia.
“Well, who else could it be… Him and his property! He’s always in a tizz about his property. As if I’ll need it. I’m going straight to America to be a model. At first he said only that he won’t be paying for anything any more, but then I said that I wouldn’t be able to pay you any more – that we were splitting the cash fifty-fifty, and that your mum’s out of work and you’re even eating leaves and moss… Just as well that you’re like a beanpole – he wouldn’t have believed me otherwise…”