by Rein Raud
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He spent the first waking moments in a state of shock. Me, her, here? He felt Maarja’s hair gently tickle his chest; she was holding him tightly in her arms, as if he might otherwise disappear, evaporate into thin air. But that could not happen. Maarja was in his eyes, in his nostrils, in his flesh. Alex tried to remain motionless so as not to wake her, but she stirred, her hair brushed against his nose, and he sneezed.
Maarja opened her eyes.
The smell of pancakes was coming from downstairs.
The smile that should have promised summer
Years later Alex’s fingers still chanced across that photo from time to time when he tidied his desk drawers; understandably he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. What went wrong? Had it been his fault? At first that question had so tormented Alex that he didn’t know what to do. He could behold that image for hours on end, staring at the photo itself, or imagining it in his mind’s eye. They had been rowing on the lake, Maarja was sitting in the boat, her arms outstretched either side for support, looking directly into the camera and smiling. The photo had been taken at slightly the wrong angle, towards the sunlight, and the little camera wasn’t anyway the best. To tell the truth Alex wasn’t the most expert of photographers either, but that wasn’t the main problem. Maarja’s smile was clear to see. Alex was in the picture too, at least his finger was, having let his finger wander into the field of the lens on the tiny camera. So at least they were still together in the photograph. But not anywhere else. Alex didn’t know how to read that smile. It had promised an eternity. It had promised summer would never end. But things had turned out differently. So maybe he should have been able to make out something else in that smile as well, something which foreshadowed loss. But for as long as he looked, he couldn’t find it. Oh well, he’d been young then. His whole life had lain before him.
Maarja had in fact come to help her grandmother pick blackcurrants, but when she tried to suggest adding that to the plans for the day, Grandma just mumbled something good-naturedly and told her to be on her way. Alex and Maarja went to the lake, even though neither of them had their swimming things with them, but it turned out that the boat hire was open. A man wearing a panama hat and a T-shirt with a picture of Donald Duck on it pushed their boat into the water for them. Alex grabbed hold of the oars and then they were off, away from the swimmers and sunbathers, towards the opposite bank, towards the island which they could see at the far end of the lake. Alex looked at Maarja and smiled. Maarja looked at him and smiled back. At that moment nothing could have been clearer for them. Certainly not the lake water – that was dark, with weeds of some sort growing in it which the oars got tangled in from time to time. And so here we were. If only it could last forever. Alex steered the boat around the lake so that not even the little town was visible any more, just the trees growing on the banks and the bulrushes, and the two of them. Just like in a film. He lifted the oars on to the boat so that he could rest for a while, and he looked at Maarja.
“You know, this is what happiness feels like,” he said, but he couldn’t help feeling that his voice sounded incredibly hollow.
The camera was hanging round his neck. Moments like this are impossible to capture on film, but still.
Then he realised that Maarja was singing. Not very loudly – someone standing on the bank wouldn’t have heard. And it wasn’t a song which Alex could have known, probably not even a real song with real words which could mean real things in some real language. It was Maarja’s own song. Completely her own.
To this day he still feels lucky that he heard that once in his life.
Karl had kept putting off talking to the others. He still felt good when he was with them, and he didn’t try to avoid their company, but neither did he seek it out. To tell the truth he didn’t really think about things very much, he just went with the flow. He didn’t know – how could he? – that his condition, or something very similar to it, had been medically defined, initially in a 1974 article written by Ann Wolbert Burgess and Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, in which they analysed the mental health of rape victims. It was the start of a whole new line of research in psychiatry. Anyone who is interested can find overviews of it in the specialist literature. It should be said that I am not in any way trying to compare Karl’s experiences with real victims of abuse, especially since we are dealing with an invented character. But that in no way lessens the psychological trauma which these events caused him.
The other guys tried to look after Karl in every way possible. Indrek took him to the cinema to watch The Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel. It turned out that Tarts had a decent stamp collection left over from the old days, and although he no longer had any interest in it himself he fished it out for Karl to peruse. But all this made it even harder for Karl to have the discussion which he needed to have with them. The security services had still not got in touch with him. He had a telephone number which he was supposed to call if he wanted to talk, although he didn’t plan to ever use it. But his signature was there on the paperwork. He could never deny that. He’d used that to buy his way out of the cell which had stank of piss and sweat, which he’d been forced to share with one yob after another, although he was sometimes alone for several days in a row as well. That signature will always be with him, even after he explains everything to the others. Then they will know, of course. That he is not pure. That he is not like the rest of them. Not properly one of the gang. He could never be forgiven for that. But he certainly didn’t want to be back in that cell, back before he’d signed that paperwork. In fact he didn’t want anything at all any more.
In truth he hadn’t actually betrayed anyone or anything. Of course he wouldn’t have got out if he’d said nothing at all, let’s make no bones about that, but then he hadn’t said anything which the KGB did not already know.
In any case, Särg had believed that it would be enough. Or at least he pretended that he believed. It was a subtle game of course.
They were in the cellar. Karl had naturally come when he was invited; he had no reason to hide himself away.
“Ervin spoke on Radio Free Europe again yesterday,” Indrek said happily. “Damn, he pulled off a blinder.”
“Seems like that Ervin of ours has turned into something of a philosopher,” Pille said with a clear note of irony, and nodded. “Next thing you know he’ll be leading the troops into battle.”
“And what of it?” Indrek said reproachfully. “He didn’t say that the commies should be shoved into the gas chamber or anything like that, did he? He just said they should keep their distance, that there would be no place for them at the helm of an independent Estonia. Wasn’t that how you understood it too?”
Pille shrugged her shoulders.
“Maybe that kind of stuff should be decided at the elections,” she said.
“Now hold on a minute,” said Indrek, refusing to back down. “At the moment the Supreme Soviet is pulling up the ladder behind it, passing all sorts of laws, making a dog’s dinner of things, who knows how we’re going to cope? If you want my view, I don’t think that the Estonian Committee should be making so many compromises.”
Karl found their constant bickering annoying.
“Where’s Raim?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s sure to be there at the teacher’s place again,” Indrek blurted.
“What teacher?”
“Lidia Gromova,” Pille said. “The one who gets those photos from the KGB files for him, you know. She used to be the Russian teacher at our school.” Pille and Raim had gone to the same school, although Pille had been there a good few years later, and only knew about Lidia Petrovna by hearsay.
“Then he gets to deliver the films to where they need to go himself, damn it,” Indrek added. “We have to sit here like some wallflowers at a disco while other guys get to make history.”
Maarja was waiting for him on the third floor of the Pegasus café. That was their special place, and neither of them would ever
go there with anyone else. She was sitting at a table by the window, her large odd-looking bag on the chair opposite her.
“Greetings,” said Raim, taking a seat and glancing absent-mindedly at her drawing.
It was a picture of a boat and a lake, with stars in the sky. And slightly to one side were four letters: ALEX.
“Who’s this Alex then?” Raim asked in surprise. Maarja quickly crumpled up the picture.
“Oh, he’s just a friend,” she said. But she was actually glad to have someone to talk to. And so she told him about Alex, although not everything. About how they first met. And then the next time, before they properly got to know each other. How they went to Pirita. How Alex even came to visit her from Leningrad one time.
“Are you crazy?” Raim asked in amazement. “A Russian?” Of course he saw Li differently; her nationality wasn’t relevant.
“What about it, I’ve got several Russian friends.” Maarja said defensively. “There’s Tonya at art school, for example.”
“And he works in some joint venture?” Raim shook his head. “Are you sure that he’s not a spook from some agency? They don’t take any old person to work in those kinds of organisations you know.”
“What do you mean agency?”
“You know very well yourself what we’re up to, don’t you?” Raim snapped. “And you’re seriously trying to tell me that it was pure chance that this guy ended up being at Kadriorg at exactly the same time? Honestly, you’re just like a little girl. He’s obviously going there to watch that Finnish guy who comes to collect your packages. Why else would he always be there at exactly the same time?”
“But maybe he never goes into Kadriorg Palace? And those packages always reach their destination, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do,” Raim conceded. “Maybe he just hasn’t got his hands on them yet. Or maybe they’re just keeping the process under checks for now, how do I know?” But he’d suddenly become completely convinced that Alex couldn’t mean anything good.
“I don’t think so,” Maarja said, turning bright red.
Maarja could feel the walls closing in on her oppressively, the ceiling getting lower and the floor growing cold; Raim carried on talking but it was as if he were speaking a foreign language. Her head was spinning, and it took all her strength just to keep her thoughts focused. Alex. Alex. Alex. But then what else can another person ever be to you besides a string of disparate memories, even if some of them have been imprinted on your skin, your version of those moments when you were together, plus the light and shade which your conscious mind – or maybe your senses – has added. These memories sometimes seemed to be explanations written by a third party, mixed with all kinds of questions about the real meaning hidden in his words and gestures. And what can you ever be to anyone else? As you know very well yourself, there are many layers, many nascent half-thoughts warring between themselves within you, but they are separated by a deep furrow from the outside world, and only some of them eventually make it out, over the bridge and out through the gate. Wasn’t it reasonable to assume that other people experienced things the same way? Maarja was sure that this wasn’t a question of lying, not necessarily. And it wasn’t insincerity either. It was just part of being human: inside every person there is space for more than can ever be put into words or gestures, even if things do sometimes unwittingly slip out into the big world outside. And we’re only talking about the things we notice, after all. I am not a tower constructed from iron girders, standing somewhere on a mountain top from where all is visible, but a hollow ship, which creaks as it veers this way and that, only imagining that it knows where it is headed.
So how can I long for clarity, demand to really understand another person? Because that is truly what I want. I seem to be able to recall his physical form and the words he said, but maybe I don’t, maybe I can only remember his voice saying certain things, sentences uttered in moments of greater certainty which I now remember so well – those moments are my medicine, my salvation, my fix. But even more than that I remember the line which joins those moments together within me. Can it be broken? It seems it can. It seems that these cold metal words can be inserted into me, like an endoscope. Words which I cannot digest, and which cannot sound in harmony with the orchestra of my being. The violins are awkwardly silent, the drums no longer thunder, the conductor has thrown his baton into the corner and is holding his head in his hands and yelling, but he can’t be heard because those instruments were his voice. Now then. I have to pull myself together. I am an adult. What do I know? Only what I can remember. It’s not a lot, but it is beautiful. Can there be another explanation for it? The honest answer is yes, there can. Does it change anything? Yes, it does. Does it change everything? Yes, it does.
They went their separate ways outside Pegasus. Maarja looked ill. Towards the end of their conversation Raim had to repeat nearly ever sentence several times, and even then he wasn’t sure if Maarja had fully understood. Damn, she could end up under a tram or something if she wasn’t careful. With the films in her handbag. But he definitely couldn’t go with her. Instead he waved to her as she left, as if that would somehow protect her. But Maarja didn’t look back once.
Whenever Raim was up to something which was even moderately risky he was sure to check whether he was being tailed. He’d done exactly that on his way to Pegasus. But not right now. That is why he did not notice how over on the other side of Harju Street, just slightly towards the Victory Square end, a woman came to a sudden standstill. An attractive woman who was hurrying back towards Pagari Street after her lunch break, a woman who used to be a Russian teacher … I probably don’t need to continue.
No, I can’t believe it, I just can’t. That someone can look at me that way when he really has no other aim than to follow the tracks like a bloodhound, to find the hidden treasure. I just can’t, and that’s that.
“So, today is your last time here,” the woman on the till said with a smile when Maarja greeted her.
“How do you know?” Maarja said in alarm.
“Next week they’re going to start renovating the palace,” the woman explained. “I’ve got no idea how long it is going to take.”
Snap.
Rustle-rustle.
Crack.
Plunk.
Maarja had no appetite for teacake today. None whatsoever. She walked out the gates of Kadriorg Palace and down the park path until she found a sufficiently large tree from behind which the museum entrance was visible. This can’t be right. The next time we meet we’ll laugh about it all. About how silly the world is, how silly people are. Or even better, we’ll meet today. Maybe he is already in the café, coffee and meringue on the table in front of him, waiting and wondering where I have got to.
She barely managed to wait ten minutes when a taxi arrived from the direction of town and came to a halt, and then her very worst fears were confirmed. It was Alex who jumped out of the taxi and ran into the museum. A few minutes passed, and then he was out again. Off down the other path towards the café.
Now let’s not fool ourselves. That could only mean one thing.
No rustle of trees to be heard, no crunch of gravel under the feet of the family walking past.
So that’s that then.
How many pillows do you need to soak in tears before your eyes are able to see the world as it was?
How many letters do you have to rip to shreds before you realise that you never even knew his address?
How many times must the flowers bloom and wither before they can bloom for you again?
You have to have been there to know.
“I thought that I was your one and only,” Lidia Petrovna said.
“But you are,” said Raim in surprise.
“Oh really?”
But what do I actually know about this guy, other than that I am addicted to his body? Maybe he’s got a whole coterie of women just waiting to come and drape themselves round his neck at the click of his fingers. That would be the most ordi
nary thing in the world for him.
“What’s up?” Raim asked. “You’re somehow … different today.”
“Yes, that’s right, I understand the world a bit better than before.”
“Tell me what’s the matter then.” Li had never seemed so distant.
“All right. I saw you in town yesterday. You must have just been for a coffee. With someone else. But I understand of course, I’m only good for one thing. Well I do beg your pardon, I can’t help being who I am.”
“Ah.” There was only one café Raim had been to the previous day. “If you mean that girl from Pegasus, then that’s just a young artist I know.” Raim was well aware that it was better for the links in the chain not to know too much about each other, but losing Li was a far greater risk. “She’s the person to whom I pass the films you give me, nothing more. Her name is Maarja. We don’t even properly know each other.”