The Death of the Perfect Sentence

by Rein Raud

  “Thanks,” said Tapani, hurriedly shoving it into his pocket. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

  Alex took a long look at him. Last night he’d spent some time working out how best to phrase the question which he now planned to ask. Such as, “Listen, are you messing me around?” Or, “Sorry, but I would appreciate knowing.” Or, “We’ve known each other for a while now, perhaps you could explain who on earth you are.”

  But none of them turned out to be necessary.

  “I can see that you’re in need of a bit of clarity,” Tapani said affably. “It’s written on your face.”

  He took off his glasses and wiped them with a serviette.

  “Look, I could of course tell you. But that would put you in a pretty tricky position. Because then you would need to choose. You could tell your superiors the whole story, but they would be surprised that you didn’t come and tell them right away, even if you didn’t tell them all the details. Or we could continue our friendship, although it would be a little bit different now. In that eventuality I would ask you to do what you have done for me just a couple more times.”

  As Alex tried to absorb the full meaning of those words, the pizzas arrived, placed on the table in front of them by a young man wearing an earring.

  But so what?

  “I would like to know what is on those films,” Alex said.

  “I should probably start a bit closer to the beginning,” Tapani said, passing Alex a knife and fork. “We are both of the view that there are positive changes taking place in your homeland at the moment, is that not so? But we also know that many people don’t like what’s happening for obvious reasons. What we are doing is intended to help those who want to change your country for the better, make it more humane, more open, a place where people don’t have to live in constant fear.”

  “We don’t live in constant fear,” Alex interrupted him.

  “Very well, very well,” said Tapani, taking a swig of water. “Let’s put it this way: we’re trying to help those people who want to live their lives free from lies.”

  “But what is on those films then?” Alex asked again.

  “They are photographs of documents, taken by certain very brave people.” So things were pretty serious then, Alex thought to himself. “They are photos of the front pages of KGB agent files. I’m sure you will appreciate that it is extremely important for us to know who’s who.”

  But Alex had actually been expecting something much worse. Now it turned out that they were only talking about some common snitches. He couldn’t stand them, who could? But it was well known that the best defence was to make sure that you had nothing to hide. He knew that from experience.

  “For example, it would be wise for you to bear in mind that a certain Mister Kalugin, Konstantin Zakharovich from your department is working for the secret services.” Tapani pronounced the name with great difficulty. “So be careful what you say in his presence.”

  Really?

  He certainly wouldn’t have expected anything like that of that drunken lecher. Of course it was natural that there would be interest in their department; they were involved in joint ventures with foreign companies after all, but if he’d been taken on to work there, wouldn’t he have been vetted already?

  “How do you know that?” Alex asked.

  “I just know.”

  Alex didn’t have any reason to doubt him.

  But taken altogether this could only mean one thing. That he was sitting and eating lunch with someone who was somehow linked to Western intelligence agencies. To those very organisations whose raison d’être was to force the Soviet Union to its knees and destroy it, as he’d been told for as long as he could remember. Up until now he had no reason to try to imagine what their agents might look like, so he was only capable of visualising them as those dogged assassins in long raincoats who chased Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor (which he’d been to see twice). So what if Robert Redford was working for the CIA as well.

  But he’d been told a great many other things too, and then told that everything was in fact the opposite to what he’d been told.

  How can a person remain true to himself in such a situation? Tapani didn’t seem too bothered by that dilemma himself.

  “Supposing,” began Alex slowly, “that I agree with you on this. I mean, that it’s useful to know who is going to make complaints about their colleagues, and so on. You must surely understand that there’s no way I would betray my country – that’s all there is to it.”

  “You know what,” Tapani replied, “I reckon that the ones who are betraying your country are the ones who want to keep your people permanently in the dark. It might sound high-flown, but that’s how things are. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

  “You’ll give me your word that there aren’t any pictures of any, I don’t know, airfields or port facilities on those films?”

  “If my word actually means anything to you, then yes. You have my word.”

  Some things just are what they are

  Alex and his mother had just come back from the beach. His uncle had left them the keys to his holiday home while he was away at a conference, and it was one of the few buildings in Olgino which was close to the sea, although it wasn’t part of one of those state holiday factories. They’d walked along the wooden walkway leading inland with their towels slung over their shoulders, having decided not to get dressed on the beach as there were no changing booths nearby.

  The black car was parked close to the front door, the men showed their official IDs, mother opened the door and let them in. Looking back on it now, Alex realised that the men had known that they weren’t going to find anything. It was just their way of making a point. They chucked the plates out of the kitchen cupboard on to the floor, smashing them to bits, and they pulled the clothes from the wardrobe, ripping as many of them as possible. (“Please, they’re my dresses!” – “Shut up, bitch”), but the books got the worst of it of course. There was nothing controversial amongst them, just Soviet editions of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Blok. Uncle had bought them from the hard currency shops in Leningrad after his conferences, there was nowhere else one could get hold of them. They ripped the binding open, as if they suspected that the books contained messages other than those hidden between the lines of verse. Alex sat in his room, shaking. He was cold, still dressed only in his swimming trunks. One of the men looked in from the doorway, casting his gaze across the room with its empty walls, spartan bed, desk with no drawers, and the chair by the window, but he didn’t enter. Their gazes met like a sword striking a shield. Alex and his mother returned to Leningrad that same evening, and neither of them has gone back to Olgino since.

  Alex thought things over. On the one hand he was sufficiently naive to trust an intelligence agent, on the other hand, even if he did not realise it himself, Tapani was not actually an intelligence agent at all, he just had a lot of good Estonian friends in Sweden.

  “But what if I get caught?”

  Tapani sighed in relief, but Alex didn’t notice.

  “I can’t promise it will be completely risk-free.” He took his notebook from his pocket and looked for something inside it. “On the whole they don’t search people like you at customs too often. But if it were to happen,” he took a business card out from the notebook and handed it to Alex, “tell them that this person asked you to take the films to Finland to be developed because they don’t process that type of colour film in Estonia.”

  Alex read the business card, which was in Russian. The name on it was Eduard Margusovich Põldmaa, of the Estonian Soviet Forest, Cellulose, Paper and Timber Ministry, department for foreign relations.

  “He’s a KGB man,” Tapani continued. “He managed to harm quite a few people before they realised who he was. And it’s quite possible that he could have got hold of those photos too, if he was working for the other side. So if you slip up, point the finger at him: it’s only his word against yours, and they have more grounds to su
spect him than you. If that happens then it will be the last time, I won’t bother you any further.”

  It all sounded quite reasonable to Alex. If only his damned tooth hadn’t started to play up again.

  For a couple of weeks now Ervin had been living in a room which they’d found for him, in a building which resembled a dormitory and was about ten minutes’ walk from Bergshamra metro station. He wasn’t exactly overjoyed with the place. It was a pretty grim place – a bed, chair, table and cupboard, nothing else. On top of that he had to share the kitchen with darkies who often cooked their smelly food in the mornings. But he could put up with going to the kitchen once a day to heat up the oven-ready meals he bought from the supermarket, and otherwise he didn’t have much need for it, since he had a kettle in his room.

  On the whole he was disappointed with Stockholm. For the first few days it had been fun to walk round the old town and look into the shops on Drottninggatan, but all their prices were extortionate. There was no point in going into any of the bars. At first the journalists had shown an interest in him, and he even managed to cobble together some pocket money from the interviews, but they soon disappeared; after all he didn’t have anything earth-shatteringly new to say any more. He could always drop by the Estonian House, and they would always be happy to see him, but there wasn’t really much point. He was surprised how quickly he got used to the sight of the blue, black and white flag of Estonian independence flying there freely. But it was still a handsome sight, to be sure. He picked up the exile jargon pretty quickly, and found it easy to get talking to people. Lots of books which were banned back home were freely available in the library, but he’d always been more of a man of action, as he told the old grannies. And there was sod all to do there.

  On one occasion he foolishly took one of the bottles of vodka he’d brought from Estonia to a party, which caused everyone to liven up, and they poured it out into shot glasses, which made for a promising start to the evening. But unfortunately a start was all it was; once it was finished most of them had to make do with tea, while a few of them, including Ervin, drank that light Swedish beer which back in Estonia wouldn’t have been deemed fit for watering plants.

  Another thing: there was little to talk to girls about other than politics. One time he went for a walk round town with one of them and a fancy limousine drove past full of shrieking, scantily clad girls. They were strewing bits of paper on to the street with the word TABOO and a picture of a wineglass and a telephone number on them. When he asked his companion what they were, she blushed and explained that it was a club – a sex club. Sweden was a free country, and freedom had its price of course. Ervin realised it wasn’t a good idea to pursue the subject any further. He wouldn’t have ventured into a club like that on his own, and it was likely to cost a fair bit.

  As luck would have it the Bergshamra metro stop was just outside the central ticket zone. So there wasn’t much sense going into town if he didn’t have anything worthwhile to do there.

  There wasn’t much on television either. Eventually Ervin gritted his teeth, bought himself some sports gear, and started going running in the park. Just for something to do.

  That was where they got him.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.