Lace Weaver

by Lauren Chater

  ‘Not far to go now.’ Olga creaked an eyelid open. ‘Ah. I see you’ve come to your senses.’ A satisfied smile played over her lips. ‘You see? It is cool. Best to be prepared for the change in climate. Estonia.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘Why your uncle sent your father here is anyone’s guess. So far from Moscow. So very far from home. Still, your mother always spoke of it with such fondness.’

  I resumed my seat beside her, tucking the coat around me so the ends didn’t drag, as meek as the child she insisted I still was. The spiky ends of the fur pricked against my neck. I could not help but imagine it a collar, growing tighter the further away from Uncle we drew.

  Peacock Tails

  Kati

  ‘Stand up, damned of the Earth

  Stand up, prisoners of starvation

  Reason thunders in its volcano

  This is the eruption of the end!’

  I smiled as I crossed the courtyard to Aunt Juudit’s apartment block. It was not yet ten in the morning, but her gramophone was working overtime, cranking out ‘L’Internationale’, the loud orchestral tune that had been chosen by Lenin, before his death, to celebrate the grandeur and might of the Communist party. The origin of the song itself was French but the Russians had adopted it as their anthem. They had even expanded it from four stanzas to six, the better to capture its spirit of revolution. Stalin, Lenin’s successor, was said to love it so much that it was often referred to as ‘Stalin’s Song’.

  Aunt Juudit appeared in the doorway of the apartment block holding a broom. Her hair had faded from the bright red I remembered from childhood – the same shade as the crimson geraniums spilling from the wooden planter boxes beside the door – to the dull silver of old coins. As I approached she continued to sing, oblivious to everything, swinging the broom and swaying her body in time with the music. She had a beautiful voice; a powerful alto-contralto, cultivated through many years of training at the Conservatory in Tallinn.

  If she had continued, she might have gone on to be one of the greatest opera singers Estonia had ever known. But an unfortunate bout of bronchial illness had befallen her in her twenties, robbing her of breath. Her lungs had never been the same. She had come here to Tartu to live on the farm with my parents and Grandmother, before she met and married my uncle, a professor at the university. Although she had done her best to be content with a quiet life, it was not possible for her to give up singing altogether; music beat in her heart and pulsed in her veins. When our old choir mistress died, it was Aunt Juudit who took over, marching in with her record player in its box beneath her arm to teach us songs. Every fifth year she travelled back to Tallinn to sing with her old choir friends at laulupidu, the song festival, and when I was eight she had taken me with her. We had reached the stadium to find a brass band in full swing, the trumpeters blasting notes while the trombone players sent out rippling glissandos of sound. I heard hymns from Viljandi, fishing songs from island settlements like Saaremaa. My favourite was regilaul, runo song, which was poetry with a little melody mixed in. Like the sagas of Iceland, it told the stories of everyday people, but our runo was mostly sung by women, so the stories were flavoured with the preoccupations of women’s lives: births and deaths, betrayals. Hardships and heartbreak. All the things that had not changed in more than two thousand years since the first runo was sung.

  Although there was a chance the song festival would go ahead in three years’ time, it would be the Russians who organised it. There would be no runo. L’Internationale was the Soviet-approved anthem now. Although I found its melody stirring, the meaning behind its popularity left a sour taste on my tongue. Its showy brass and bluster could never match the quiet power of ‘My Fatherland, My Happiness and Joy’, the song Estonians had chosen as their anthem, as a reminder of their independence and their faith, a song nobody dared to sing now in the face of arrest and execution or deportation. With a pang, I remembered what Papa had told me the day Oskar’s mother was murdered; all it took was one tune sung in front of the wrong people for the Russians to act. We were a tiny minority living on a knife’s edge.

  Catching sight of me, my Aunt Juudit glanced up. A smile illuminated her features. A lace shawl was knotted around her neck, decorated with her signature pattern of peacock tails. She drew me to her side, and we sang the last line of the anthem together, Aunt Juudit’s soft, papery cheek pressed against my own.

  This is the final struggle!

  Let us group together and tomorrow

  The Internationale

  Will be the human race.

  The trumpets gave one final triumphant blast and faded away.

  Above us, a window banged open. A man’s face appeared, grizzled features twisted into a scowl. He rubbed at his eyes with a scarred knuckle, cursing at us in heavily accented Russian.

  Aunt Juudit radiated a smile. ‘Ah! Good morning, Mr Vachenko! Would you care to join us? It’s never too early for a bit of patriotism, is it?’

  The old man’s eyes narrowed, but he clamped his lips shut. The glass rattled as he slammed the window closed.

  Aunt Juudit turned to me, one eyebrow raised. ‘What do you think, Kati? Another round?’

  I shook my head, trying not to smile.

  Since her dismissal as choir mistress last year when the Soviets arrived, Aunt Juudit’s small rebellion was to play ‘L’Internationale’ as loudly as possible each morning.

  ‘Let them dare to complain,’ I’d heard her say. ‘Let them be dragged off for treason. It won’t be me!’

  So far nobody had dared to complain; not the new Russian residents in the units above, nor any of the remaining Estonians in the surrounding buildings in this small corner of Tartu.

  Aunt Juudit lifted her shoulders and sighed in mock disappointment. ‘Ah well. Another time, perhaps.’ She cupped my cheek. ‘It’s good to see you, Kati. I was starting to worry.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t catch a lift this morning. It seems all the lorries were headed in the other direction.’

  Waving off my apology, my aunt picked up the broom and shuffled backwards to prop open the door. ‘Never mind. Come in, come in. The others are waiting.’ As I began to move past her she reached out to squeeze my arm and lowered her voice. ‘Kati, Viktoria has finished the pasqueflower shawl at last. Make a fuss, won’t you? You know how fragile she is. I think, between you and me, that she’s finally starting to improve.’

  A fresh chord of guilt plucked at my heart. How could I tell them about the wool?

  I scurried past before Aunt Juudit had a chance to say more.

  The apartment was not a large one; there was no grand entrance. The door opened straight into the cosy parlour. Although from the outside the apartment seemed quiet and unassuming, inside it was a hive of activity on a morning like this, the last meeting of knitting circle before the market next week. Women were crammed into every available space. Some, like my cousin Etti, were squashed into armchairs near the window, their knitting in their laps, their tongues already busy imparting the latest news. Others, like the sisters Miri and Helve, were busy on the balcony outside. Their laughter drifted in through the open door. They were stretching a shawl across a birch wood frame. They looked up, their cheeks pink, holding the frame between them. The shawl’s lace edges were hooked across the bordered nails like a net designed to catch leaping circus performers. A bucket sat at their feet, filled with warm soapy water. Each shawl we made had to be hand washed gently in rainwater collected in buckets and heated to eliminate any impurities. Once blocked and dried, the yarn would relax into its final shape and any loose stitches were woven back in.

  ‘Hi! Kati!’ Their voices rang out warmly in greeting.

  I raised my hand.

  Other women murmured greetings at me before turning back to their neighbours to resume their conversations. Today was not just a day of tying up loose ends. It was also a chance to talk and catch up on the latest news. Since the arrival of the Soviets, our local newspaper Postimees
had been full of stories unrelated to the annexation. It was clear that the journalists were being held to ransom; they could not print the truth, so the only way to glean any real knowledge was to listen to local gossip.

  Snatches of it trickled through the room.

  ‘Did you hear about Helju Jänes from Pärnu county? Her husband was arrested last month.’

  ‘Those poor children!’

  ‘She took her last roubles to the upravlenie administration office to ask them for help. She was hoping they would exchange them for food.’

  ‘And what did they do?’

  ‘Well, they turned up in the middle of the night and turned her house upside down, didn’t they, searching for more! Of course, they found nothing. Then they took her away, too.’

  An indrawn gasp. ‘Where did they take her?’

  ‘Nobody knows. The children will have to work on the kolkhoz farm now. No more school for them.’

  There was a pause as this depressing news sank in before the gossip resumed.

  ‘In Ülejõe, the Police Captain let some Russian prisoners out of jail,’ said Tuuli. ‘Gave them a pardon. They told my cousin the men had been “wrongfully imprisoned” by the old Estonian government. Now my cousin is afraid to walk down the street without her husband. When she complained, the militia laughed at her and told her she had better exercise harder in case she had to run and escape. Animals. I told her she must write to me weekly and let me know she is safe. I can’t bear to think of her and those children in their flat all vulnerable and alone the nights Karlos is away.’

  More outraged muttering. I saw Etti lean forward in her chair and pat Tuuli on the arm in sympathy. Tuuli gave my cousin a sad smile but then lifted her shoulder as if to say, ‘What can be done?’

  The answer, of course, was ‘nothing’.

  It was not safe to speak the truth in the street. We each of us knew that what was said in the knitting circle must remain there, but we had also an unspoken contract that we would not keep secrets unless they were not ours to tell. It made the import of what I had come to say feel even heavier. How could I tell these women, who had so much invested in the knitting of shawls, that there was no longer an opportunity to knit, to tell stories and share the collective burden of our pain?

  I could feel Etti’s eyes on me. My poor cousin knew the pain of overwhelming grief and the need to share it in some safe place. Eight months had passed since her husband’s death, but her face had not lost its gaunt, haunted expression. Sadness had suppressed her appetite, so she was even thinner than the rest of us, her arms thin ropes, devoid of muscle. I turned quickly away, busying myself with my own shawl, unlooping it from around my neck and hanging it on the old timber hallstand next to the door. I recognised a scrap of my grandmother’s knitting still hanging there; the final sampler she had ever made, a wolf’s paw print pattern identical to the one woven into my own lace. It always gave me a little jolt of sadness to see it, to remember her in this very room, her slippers whispering as she moved among the women, the rise and fall of her voice as she made suggestions of improvement or pointed out necessary corrections that would save the knitter the agony of having to unpick rows of yarn down the track. Although the other samplers she had made were carefully preserved, my grandmother had told us she wanted this one to remain visible in Aunt Juudit’s apartment, to be always in view to remind us that she was still around, still part of the group even if only in spirit.

  ‘There you are, Katarina Rebane.’ The most senior woman in our group, Helle, had set aside her knitting and shuffled forward, her elderly face creased into a smile. Helle was so old she resembled a little bird who had long ago lost all its feathers. Her scalp was visible through the fine wisps of her hair. A faded grey housecoat swam on her small frame. Each time I saw her, she seemed to have shrunk a little more. I held her hands while she pecked at my cheek. Her kiss was as light as the brush of a sparrow’s wings, but when I drew back I saw that her eyes were sparkling knowingly and when I squeezed her fingers gently she gripped me with such surprising strength I had to laugh.

  ‘Tere hommikust,’ she whispered in Estonian. Good morning. She was always formal despite having known me since I was just a scrap of a child playing about my grandmother’s ankles while snippets of gossip eddied overhead, punctuated by the rhythm of clicking needles. Helle and my grandmother had been close friends, united by their love of knitting and by their dreams that one day their handknitted Estonian shawls would be sold in department stores all over the world. It was not such a foolish dream; when the Crown Prince of Sweden visited Estonia in 1932, my grandmother and Helle had travelled to Haapsalu to present him with a shawl made in his honour. Its pinecone pattern, kroonprints as it came to be known, had been adapted from a well-known one found on an antique mitten on the island of Muhu. There had also, at one time, been interest from an American investor who had fallen in love with the Haapsalu shawls and planned to entice a group of master knitters to return with him to his department store in New York. Imagine, my grandmother had said with wonder in her voice, every American girl wearing an Estonian lace shawl! The outbreak of war in Europe had put an end to these plans. It was probably for the best; the trip to Haapsalu had taken Helle weeks to recover from. The journey to America, if she had tried to undertake it, might have finished her off altogether.

  ‘Väga hästi,’ I whispered in return. Very well. Then in Russian: ‘How did you go this month?’

  Helle lifted her chin proudly. ‘Ten shawls.’

  Some of the women around us looked up from their knitting, muttering in surprise. One woman, Leili Poska, made a disbelieving sound in her throat and set down the practice sampler in her lap. ‘Ten? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true. I would have made more, if I’d been allotted more yarn.’ Helle stooped to lift the lidded basket at her feet onto the empty chair behind. Pulling back the lid, she lifted out a shawl. The other women crowded around as Helle shook out the lace. Gathered eagerly together, they looked like hungry birds cooing over a crumb, eyes shining brightly in pale faces above the grey threadbare dresses they had cinched around their waists. Each woman wore her own lacy shawl, which at least made the clothes seem less tattered than they ought. Material had been increasingly hard to find the past few years; first the war between Germany and Britain had proved restrictive, then there was the lack of clothing available in the Soviet stores. Those who were skilled at sewing, not just knitting, were able to refashion their dresses and skirts but there was a longing among us, especially the young ones, for something new, a nostalgia for the warm memories of St John’s Eve when our mothers would gift us with new clothes to celebrate midsummer. At least we could still have a new shawl even if we had to wear our old rags. It was a tiny comfort.

  ‘It’s a twig pattern, as Kati suggested,’ Helle said, tracing a bony finger along the pattern that zigzagged up the centre of the shawl. ‘I added some nupps for extra weight. See?’

  She tossed the shawl’s frilly edge so the nupps were visible. Murmurs of envy rose up around us.

  ‘They are all of the same high quality,’ Helle said. She pulled the other shawls out and laid them on the chair. ‘Kati, you will check them.’

  I hesitated. It was not necessary. Helle was a master knitter and her work was always polished. But it was my job to ensure that each shawl we sold was of an acceptable quality; that there were no loose ends or untidy seams. No reason for a buyer to bring it back or raise a complaint.

  My grandmother had told me once that there must always be a leader, someone to take charge. Sometimes it’s a burden, sometimes a gift. Never take the responsibility for granted.

  I gave the shawls a cursory glance, testing their weight and splaying them across my hand before folding them up again.

  ‘They are fine,’ I said. ‘More than fine. They are perfect.’

  Helle shrugged her shoulders, as if she had expected nothing less, but a smile teased the corners of her mouth. Master lacework like this was
the culmination of years of practice and dedication to the craft. There were not many other areas in which women could boast of such superiority in our world. ‘My grandson helped me wash and block them yesterday,’ she said. ‘He was not pleased when I reminded him of the knitting I made him do when he came to stay with me each winter as a boy. He told me I should keep my information to myself, if I did not want to find someone else to do my laundry work.’

  Laughter erupted from the women nearby. Helle’s smile widened. Boys were taught to knit, too, from a young age although they usually gave it up when they were old enough to help with the heavier chores. During the long winters, when snow and darkness made it impossible to go outside, whole families would sometimes work together, carding sheep’s wool between paddles to rid it of burrs and then refining it on the spinning wheel, making sure the baskets were always full of yarn.

  Helle began to place her folded shawls back in the basket.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Leili said. She turned to me, unsmiling. ‘You haven’t tested them properly. With the ring.’

  Helle’s lips compressed and she turned around, scowling. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The wedding ring,’ Leili repeated, drawing out each word slowly as if Helle were hard of hearing. ‘The test.’

  The women around us muttered. I saw the flash of teeth as they grinned, excited by the prospect of a little conflict. There had always been competition between Leili and Helle. Rumour said it went back to the time when they were girls and Helle’s future husband, then a youth, had swum naked with Leili in Lake Peipus.

  ‘Kati isn’t married.’ Helle cast Leili a look sour enough to wither grapes. ‘So, she doesn’t have a ring. Besides, she has already given her approval.’

  ‘Here.’ My cousin Etti came to stand beside me. Reaching into the pocket of her skirt, she drew out her wedding band and pressed it into my hand.

  I tried to hand it back. ‘This is unnecessary.’

  Some of the women’s eager faces fell.