Her voice shook as she clenched and unclenched her hands, trembling with unspent rage. ‘His life was worth less than a stupid cow! The first Russian I see will be slaughtered. I do not need a weapon. I will use my hands, so help me!’
I winced as if her words were rocks against my skin and shifted away until I could not hear. I could not blame her. Until four days ago, I had not known any better. I’d supposed that the people reported had done something wrong; their arrest was proof enough. And if they were innocent, they would be pardoned. I knew the truth now. My own Russianness felt like a mark upon my skin. I shuffled closer to the fire, wondering what it would take, how many years of regret and guilt, to wash away the stain.
‘Careful. Too close and you’ll catch alight.’ I turned to find Kati’s brother standing over me. My pulse sped up. I unknotted my hands from around my knees, ready to shield my face and waited for him to point his gun. Instead he fell to his knees beside me and slung his rifle onto the pine needles criss-crossing the ground.
I watched him, muscles tensed. But he did not seem aggressive. Cautiously, I lowered my hands and hugged my knees again.
‘You didn’t tell me your mother was Estonian.’ Jakob splayed his fingers before the fire. They were clean now, the blood washed away. ‘I thought you were pure Russian through and through.’
‘It makes little difference. It doesn’t change what I am. Who my father is.’ I hunched away from him, holding my hand out, the heat licking my skin. A small ember drifted from the fire and stuck to my palm. I cried out and snatched my hand away, curling it in my lap.
‘Let me see.’ Jakob held out his hand. Reluctantly, I allowed him to uncurl my fingers. It throbbed and stung where the ember had touched it. A tiny spot of red burned in the centre like a jewel.
‘I wasn’t judging you. Does it hurt?’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said, trying to pull my hand away. Looking back at the people on the other side of the fire, I lowered my voice. ‘You might not judge me, but they will. I don’t belong here.’
Jakob smiled. It was a sad smile, laced with sympathy. ‘Your mother was Estonian. You didn’t kill anyone. And you tried to save Juudit. I would say you belong well enough.’
I shook my head. ‘You don’t understand.’
Jakob lifted his eyes. ‘Try me.’
I opened my mouth but nothing came. Jakob waited, his hand curled around mine, a patient expression on his face. How could I tell him who I really was? I was a secret wrapped in a secret. I did not deserve to be spared.
‘You—’ I began, then stopped again. ‘Everything is clear for you. Russians are bad. Estonians are good.’ I bit my lip. ‘Things for me are complicated.’
‘But you must know that you have chosen. Even if you didn’t intend to.’ He looked around. ‘You’ve chosen us. It doesn’t matter know who you are. You can’t go back. We’ll keep you safe.’
I wanted to argue with him – nobody could keep me safe from Stalin if he wanted me back – but I could also see the sense in his words. Even if I was caught, I could not return to the world I had grown up in. Joachim’s ghost would haunt my memories. And Olga, my Olga, was gone. I allowed my arm to relax a little and felt the slightest bit of pressure of his fingers as he squeezed them and looked back at my hand, as if he was studying it. His breath caressed my palm.
A long moment passed.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, growing uncomfortable and trying without success to pull my hand away.
Jakob smiled again. ‘My grandmother would tell fortunes on New Year’s Eve. Don’t you want to know what yours says?’ Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a handkerchief, which he swiftly knotted over the wound.
‘Are you saying that Estonians are as superstitious as Russians?’
‘So it would seem.’ He released my hand. ‘My grandmother called it “luck pouring”. We’d use an old bucket and a molten tin. Papa would throw a ladleful of the melted tin into cold water and grandmother would read the shape.’
I leaned my head on my knee and watched the flames dance. I was so tired, but so afraid that if I slept, my dreams would be full of blood and death and screams. ‘What did she see for you?’ I asked.
‘Always the same thing,’ Jakob said, staring at the fire. I waited. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to guess?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. A gun?’
Jakob smiled. ‘No. A stork.’
Goosebumps spread across my skin. ‘A bird is a bad omen in Russia,’ I said. ‘If it taps three times on your window, death is near.’
‘A stork, though?’ Jakob lifted a handful of dirt and scattered it towards the fire, sending little sparks dancing into the sky.
‘I don’t know about storks. I’ve never seen one.’
‘Here they are symbols of hope and fertility. Children.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘They are good parents, storks,’ he continued. ‘Both of them. They like to nest on power poles and in rooftops. The women in the knitting circle – my Aunt Juudit and Kati, Grandmother, the others – they had a lace pattern called Stork Stitch, like birds’ feet. The Scandis even think there was a stork present at the crucifixion; that it called out as Christ was dying.’ He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Stryket! Stryket! Have strength!’
Some of the Forest Brothers on the other side of the fire looked around, wondering at the sound.
‘Hush!’ I said, not wanting to draw attention, but Jakob just chuckled and they turned away.
‘I hope to have children one day,’ he said after another moment had passed.
I made a sound in my throat, incredulous. ‘After everything you have seen, everything you have been through these past few days? How can you say that?’
Jakob shrugged. ‘It changes nothing.’
‘Are you crazy? It changes everything.’ I thought of my mother, taking her own life as I slept in the room down the hall. I thought of her face in the glossy coffin, the terror of realising she was truly gone and would never return. The memory cut deep into my heart. ‘It’s a foolish statement. To have children . . . and then abandon them to fate. It is . . .’ I struggled to find the right words. ‘It is reckless and selfish.’
Jakob did not seem troubled by my reaction. His face remained as calm as ever. ‘I won’t let what has happened alter those parts of my future, Lydia. You should not let it change yours.’
I shook my head at him.
‘We have a saying. Perhaps your mother didn’t teach it to you. Igaüks on oma õnne sepp, Lydia,’ he said. ‘Everyone is the smith of his – or her – own happiness.’
‘Jakob.’ He turned. A Forest Brother stood behind us, holding out a tin mug. His face was familiar; I realised with a jolt he was the bandit I had seen during the raid on the train station, the one they had called Kalev. I recalled how different he had seemed to his companions, the way they had looked to him for leadership. The confident way he had spoken and the compassion he had shown in returning the ring to the woman when he might easily have ignored her troubles. His eyes were cold. It was as if the heat from the fire could not reach them. He made a gesture with his hand, shaking the mug for Jakob to take. Jakob hesitated, then took it.
‘Vodka. For courage,’ the other man said roughly. ‘Jaak retrieved it earlier from a fallen soldier.’
‘Aitäh,’ Jakob said. ‘Thank you.’ Kalev moved away to join his comrades. Jakob tilted the mug, looking into its depths, then raised it to his lips and swallowed. Wiping his mouth with his hand, he held it out to me. There was plenty left. The sharp scent made my stomach contract but I gulped it down anyway.
Heat spread through my body. I settled down onto the ground, not caring how it must look. Pine needles tickled my cheek. The stars spun above me, laced by dark leaves.
‘Why do you need courage?’ I asked. I held out the mug and Jakob reached for it. The tips of our fingers met.
‘We are going out again tonight,’ Jakob said, downing the last bit of the vodka. ‘There are
Russian patrols at the forest’s edge. Oskar – that is, Kalev – wants to draw them away from the camps and meeting points. Distract them so the refugees can find their way to us.’
I swallowed, the sour taste of the vodka lingering in my throat. The flames of the bonfire merged and mingled, first arctic blue then red then bright orange like a Catherine wheel. Sleep blurred the edges of my vision.
‘Aren’t you afraid?’ I mumbled.
‘I’m more afraid of doing nothing. I don’t think my parents should have died just so I could give up and surrender. I don’t think Aunt Juudit would be proud of me if I just slunk away like a dog with its tail between its legs. And my grandmother; she would not want us to leave. This was her home. This was where she raised her children and knitted her shawls. These trees, this earth. These forests and lakes. Even if we cannot live in cities, we will live here. Where else would we go?’
I tried to mumble something else – good luck, perhaps – but I was already half-dreaming, my mind weaving images together. I saw a young woman in a lace shawl sitting beside the hearth, holding a nursing infant to her breast, comforting and rocking him before the fire while outside a great stork landed in the yard and shook off its feathers. They floated like snow onto the ground, leaving the stork’s pink flesh exposed. The stork straightened up and he was a man, plucked clean, his face like Jakob’s, shining with hope. Lifting the infant, the woman ran out to greet him. They kissed and then turned to walk inside, his hand cradled around the head of his infant son.
Something soft drifted over my shoulder. Feathers? Snow? But it was summer.
A blanket. I felt the rough edge of it brush my cheek. A voice whispered in my ear, a spell to banish nightmares.
I slept and my dreams were blank.
Ash Pattern
Kati
‘Give me Leelo, Kati.’ Jakob’s voice was impatient.
I stared down at the infant’s tiny face. A whisper of golden hair clung to her scalp. Her eyes were closed. She grunted in her sleep, disturbed by some nameless dream. I stroked my thumb against her soft skin and she yawned, stirred, then settled back into my arms, a look of deep contentment spread across her face.
Only six days old and she was already disproving everything my mother had warned me about babies; that they screamed all day and all night, that you could not get anything done for watching them. Leelo was a perfect baby. She slept regularly, only waking to be fed and changed. She hardly ever grumbled, happy to be carried about in a sling made from a woollen blanket as we went about the camp doing what was required to keep everything running smoothly, her blue eyes fixed on the clouds that raced overhead. Even now, pressed against my chest while I sat with my brother and Lydia and Etti on a grassy tussock near the edge of camp, she was happy to doze, letting our conversation wash over her while she slept. A length of wire was strung between the trees on which clothes snapped in the breeze, the cotton shirts billowing like clouds.
‘Kati?’ My brother held out his hands. Just for a moment, I hesitated, imagining they were stained with rust-coloured blood. But when I blinked, they were clean. His shirt cuffs poked out beneath the long sleeves of his fitted jacket. He looked smart in his brown uniform; a reward for the three Red Army soldiers he had killed in a raid at the edge of the forest the night after the purge. Two of the Forest Brothers accompanying Jakob had been shot that night, lured out by the soldiers who had wounded a farmer and left him crying out for help in his field. Jakob had been forced to listen to the farmer’s terrified screaming while Oskar moved back into the forest to gather more men. Jakob’s companions had raced out one after the other, trying to reach the man before the bullets of the Red Army soldiers found them. Neither of them had survived. At last, Oskar had come back and a bloody fight ensued, ending at last when the Forest Brothers were able to overpower the soldiers holed up in the farmhouse. The farmer had died of his wounds before they could save him. Back at camp the other Forest Brothers, Oskar included, had hailed Jakob as a hero. Only I knew what the transaction had cost him. Only I knew how the man’s screams pierced his dreams, just as the faces of my parents haunted mine.
He jiggled his fingers impatiently. ‘Come on. You’ve not let me hold her once. You’ve been keeping her all to yourself, just like you used to do when we’d bring kittens home or stray dogs. Do you remember?’
‘She’s not a stray dog.’ I passed her gently to him, relinquishing my hold, already missing the caramel scent of her skin and the way her tiny fingers curled around mine. With a last look of longing, I took my seat on the timber crates we had set up at the edge of the camp, as far away from the latrine as possible. ‘And you never looked after them,’ I added, unable to stop myself. ‘Once we got them home, you’d take off to go fishing and leave me to clean up all their mess. Stray puppies. Those girls you followed around, asking if you could walk them home. It was always the thrill of the chase for you.’
I saw Lydia glance up sharply from the wet blouse she was wringing. She was a different person to the one I had dragged here a week ago. Stress had sharpened her face, drawing out her cheekbones. Or perhaps it was grief. I had heard her mutter in her sleep, calling out for someone called Olga. Sometimes when I woke she was already outside, helping the other women prepare breakfast at the fire, her thick dark hair slick with water and tied with a piece of twine behind her back. So much of her was a mystery, but she seemed unwilling to talk to anyone about much except for Jakob. I’d seen them chatting together when he returned from patrol. He followed her about her chores, sitting behind her while she scraped the remnants of food from the pans into a bucket or scoured blood from the uniforms with a wooden brush.
I caught only fragments of what passed between them, busy as I was with Leelo and caring for Etti, making sure she had clean rags to staunch the blood that continued to flow in the days after the birth. Sometimes it was stories about Tartu or the games we played as children, sometimes Jakob told her jokes. I could not tell whether she encouraged him; she seemed always to wear a frown. But watching her now, I wondered how I had missed it; that bright kindling of yearning in her eyes. Jakob saw it, too.
‘All lies,’ he said quickly. Lydia’s shoulders relaxed. She pegged the blouse out on the line. ‘Kati loves to exaggerate.’ My brother held the sleeping Leelo close to his chest, nestling her into his arm. A smile flickered across his face. ‘Etti.’ He glanced over at where my cousin sat, staring up at the creaking branches of the spruce trees. ‘Tell Kati she’s a liar.’
Etti did not turn around.
Sunlight glinted on her blonde hair. The leaves on the branches sighed overhead.
Jakob glanced at me. I shrugged helplessly.
If Leelo had adjusted to the rigours of life quicker than other infants, Etti seemed to be struggling to find her way back. The loss of her mother had affected her deeply. Some nights she woke screaming, bathed in sweat, sobbing for Aunt Juudit. She would not be quietened until I stumbled from my pallet to sit beside her and comfort her with soothing platitudes. I could not tell her how hard I found it, to be woken suddenly from a deep sleep. It would not be fair to complain about the grief which shook my body each time I remembered how Mama and Papa had died. In dreams, I could pretend that my parents were still alive. Poor Etti could not even find comfort in her dreams.
Often, she would sit in the grass, staring at the entrance to the camp as if she expected Aunt Juudit to come waltzing in, singing ‘L’Internationale’ at the top of her voice. Leelo was the only thing that brought her joy, but sometimes she held the baby so tight I was afraid she would crush her, and Leelo seemed to prefer being carried to being held in one place, squeezed against her mother’s chest.
I felt Jakob move restlessly beside me, Leelo in his arms. We both wanted to help Etti, but what could we do? She needed something else to keep her busy, to hold despair at bay. I wished we had a gramophone or a kannal, the six-stringed instrument which sounded a little like a lute. Surely there was somebody in the camp who could pluck
a few strings. But nobody had thought to bring anything like that. We had fled with essentials; in my knapsack were saucepans, a ladle, a sharp knife. Oskar’s gloves, which I now kept under my pillow. Nothing of comfort. Nothing that would say to Etti: Life is worth living. There is still beauty in the world.
My searching mind lit suddenly on the final addition to my knapsack: the samplers. Leaving Leelo with Jakob, I ran to the lean-to, where I unknotted my bag. I poked about inside until my fingers found the soft lace. I drew out the samplers and my grandmother’s needles and the last ball of yarn I had snatched before we fled.
I hurried back to where Etti was sitting and laid the yarn in her lap. Etti looked down. I handed her the needles, and her fingers trembled. She held them awkwardly, one in each hand.
‘Here.’ Holding her fingers carefully, I made the slipknot with Etti’s right hand and then brought her left up to meet it, the slender needle like an arrow. My grandfather had carved those needles for my grandmother from the boughs of a lilac bush. They were delicate but firm, pliable and stubborn; just like my grandmother. As I brought them together, I heard Etti sigh and felt her breath brush against my skin. ‘That’s it.’
As she began to knit, her fingers finding the rhythm, I dug through my grandmother’s samplers until I found the one with the peacock tails. Placing it across Etti’s knee, I stepped back, pleased to hear the steady sound of the needles working against each other like the ticking of a clock.
‘I was hoping you would teach me.’
I turned to find Lydia beside me, her gaze fixed on the lace in Etti’s lap. She was twisting her own shawl around her hands. I had noticed she never took it off, not even to wash it.
‘I’d be glad to teach you,’ I said. ‘But alas, there’s no yarn. Only this one ball.’
Lace Weaver Page 25