Lace Weaver

by Lauren Chater

  My stomach roiled and I lurched, stumbling away and nearly tripped over a small suitcase. Through the blur of my tears, I realised it was not a suitcase but the small body of Hanna, Johanna’s granddaughter, her tiny childish limbs curled up in death.

  I sank to my knees beside it, all semblance of hope lost, and began to sob.

  There was nothing left but blackened soil and tarnished memories. Even with their last gasp, the Soviets had destroyed any possible shred of happiness, not content to allow us to live as exiles.

  My fingers dug into the still-warm ground. I rubbed the ashes on the skin at my wrists and the back of my hands. I will not forget you, I promised them. Hilja. Hanna. Johanna. Liisa. All the people who had shown us kindness this past week and shared our meals and our stories. The women who did not have a voice, whose lives and heritage had been ripped away.

  The black ashes coated the back of my hands, mottled grey and white. They looked like lace, the same fineness; like a pasqueflower weave, or a simple pattern of vine leaves.

  I was still staring at them when I heard somebody call my name. Distantly, then growing closer.

  I climbed unsteadily to my feet as Oskar appeared between the scarred skeletons of the trees. He ran towards me, his feet stirring up the ashes. When he reached me, he crushed me to his chest. Stubble pricked my forehead and his fingers stroked my hair as he said my name, over and over.

  Eventually, he drew back. Grief lined his features. ‘If we’d known . . .’ He squeezed my hands, his face hardening. ‘If we’d come back earlier.’

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  ‘The Germans are here. They arrived this morning from Tallinn. They’re executing any remaining Soviets. Anyone who has links to the Soviet regime.’ My hand disappeared as he folded it within his own. ‘You’re safe,’ he said. ‘Safe, Kati.’

  Safe. There was no meaning in that word. It was an empty promise. All we could hope for was to help each other to survive. Our new alliance with the Germans held no guarantee.

  ‘Kati?’ He frowned. ‘Did you hear me?’

  I wanted to shake my head at him. Instead, I opened my arms.

  Spider Stitch

  Kati

  September 1941

  The sound of jackboots rang out on the cobblestones. Soldiers marched in uniform precision, their faces solemn, although some smiled fleetingly at the people lined up along the pavement. The people in the crowd shouted, smiling ecstatically, waving their hands and the Estonian flags they had fashioned themselves or brought out from boxes hidden in attics or basements. Women and children threw flowers; posies of cornflowers or ‘bachelor’s button’, twists of green ivy woven around gleaming buttercups. A stream of cars clogged Tartu’s main street, a shining procession of vehicles as black as hearses and moving just as slowly, navigating through the throngs of people, inching towards Tartu’s Town Hall.

  A warm breeze shook the boughs of the linden trees dotting the pavement and sent a shower of white blooms raining down on the heads of the crowds below. Some of the children tried to catch the whirling blossoms in their hands, voices shrill with delight. Watching them, I recalled my grandmother’s stories about the sacred linden trees, her descriptions of the women who danced in the wild linden groves, praying for fertility and domestic peace.

  The street was a picture of joy. A scene that should have filled me with happiness, blotting out the horror of the past months and the oppression of the past years. The people of Tartu welcoming their saviours. Instead, a cold dread crept into my bones. Every time I saw a Nazi swastika flash past, I was reminded of the Soviet sickle and star. Every time I heard someone shout Hitler’s name, I thought about Stalin; how people like my father had been forced to acquiesce to his demands, believing that we would be better off surrendering than fighting for our freedom. Where had it got us? What good had it done?

  I turned away, reaching up to massage my temples, hoping that anyone watching would imagine I suffered from migraine. It was half-true. I could feel the pressure mounting already, building behind my eyes, a wall of solid buzzing pain like the swarm of bees before a honeypot.

  ‘A good turnout.’

  I glanced sideways. Lydia stood beside me, hands thrust into the pockets of her skirt; one of Etti’s, the pattern of lilacs faded from once-vivid purple to a dull grey. Although she had done her best to tie her hair with a black ribbon, bits of it had escaped, springing around her shoulders in twisted coils.

  ‘People are glad to see the back of the Russians.’ I kept my voice neutral, but all the same her face changed. Guilt suffused her features.

  ‘I’m glad too,’ she said, quietly, looking over to where Etti stood a short distance away with some of the other women from the knitting circle. Helle was rocking Leelo in her arms. The baby was asleep, exhausted by the day’s excitement and the impact of a lingering cold she had battled all week. Now two months old, she had started to change, her lost newborn gaze replaced by one of keen interest in everything around her. Her blue eyes watched everything, following us as we prepared supper or knitted in the evenings as we dimmed the lamps.

  All the women wore their shawls, either tied around their shoulders or over their hair. Helle and Leili’s faces were solemn; I knew they were thinking of Aunt Juudit. Only Viktoria was smiling, one arm linked through my cousin’s. Etti herself looked tired. Her hair was dull, her skin pale from so much time spent indoors. The nights of feeding wore her out, even with Lydia and myself helping, bringing the baby to her. Leelo’s cot stayed in Lydia’s room most nights, too, so that Etti could catch some sleep without waking every hour to check that Leelo was all right.

  At least we had the ladies of the knitting circle to support us.

  There had been tears and much embracing when we returned from the camp to Aunt Juudit’s apartment. Helle especially had been glad to see us and and to learn that Etti had survived the dangers of childbirth. But only Helle and Leili had escaped deportation, taking refuge in Aunt Juudit’s apartment, too afraid to risk even contacting their families. Very slowly, we had rebuilt our lives from what remained. The women of the knitting circle had slowly accepted Lydia as one of their own. They had given her a shawl to wear which had been knitted by Aunt Juudit. Peacock Tails. The circle met once a week now in Helle’s apartment and Lydia was always invited to join us. There had not been much left to salvage from Aunt Juudit’s after the Russians smashed everything. Only the larger furniture – beds and wardrobes – had been spared. I’d already begun to teach Lydia how to knit properly and I had mended her mother’s shawl, piecing it back together with some spare yarn Helle had saved.

  A roar of sound made me glance back at the procession. A group of brown-clad men approached, their rifles shining; the Estonian Home Guard. I spotted Jakob among them and lifted my hand. His brown eyes crinkled, but his gaze went past me. With a wrench, I knew I was not the one he sought. I stepped away, giving him an unobstructed view. I did not have to look to know that he was wearing the same smile he wore every time Lydia came near, or that she was returning it.

  When I looked back, his curly head was bobbing away. Lydia pressed her hands together, staring after him. When she caught my eye a corner of her mouth lifted and colour rose to her cheeks. She turned to stare back at the apartment block that loomed across the courtyard behind us. The windows of Aunt Juudit’s apartment were shuttered closed.

  A frown wrinkled Lydia’s forehead. ‘It feels wrong to be out here. All this . . .’ She gestured around. ‘All this celebration. After everything that happened.’

  ‘I know.’

  The silence that stretched between us was filled with the happy chatter of voices, Estonian and German. But Lydia’s eyes were troubled.

  I hugged myself, realising with a jolt that my own fingers met almost around my middle. I could feel the spokes of my ribs beneath my hands. I tried to remember what I’d eaten last. Thin, watery grain. An overripe apple that turned to mush on my tongue. The departing Russians had taken w
ith them whatever they could carry. What little remained had been seized by the Germans and, in fairness, by the Estonian Home Guard and the Forest Brothers, who had needed energy to defeat the remnants of the Soviet Army. Any day, the Germans would depart, though. Then the fields would be returned to us, the kolkhoz collective farms broken up. This knowledge was bittersweet.

  Our own farm was gone. It was now nothing more than a burned-out husk, surrounded by blackened fields. My heart still ached as I recalled the way Jakob had staggered as we emerged from the forest the night after the Russians left. The way his mouth had worked as he struggled to keep control of his emotions. We had later learned that Stalin had given instructions for everything of value to be torched. Nothing was to be left for the Germans – or for us. On the 9th of July, the retreating Russians had blown up the old stone bridge over the river Emajõgi. They had blown up St. Mary’s Church and the market where we’d once sold our shawls.

  In a way, we were lucky. We had not been inside our farmhouse when the Russians destroyed it. In Kautla, a small township in Central Estonia, a battalion of retreating Russian soldiers had herded at least thirty people into their farmhouses and set them ablaze. The scene afterwards had been distressing to everyone, even the hardened members of the Erna reconnaissance group, a clutch of Finnish soldiers who had sworn to help liberate Estonia from the Soviets’ grasp. It was the Erna group who had brought the news to Oskar after clashing with the Russian battalions. At night, when visions of flames distorted my sleep, I heard the cries of those men and women begging for their lives. My eyes stung with petrol fumes. My skin blistered, the flesh melting away until only charcoal bones remained. I often woke tangled in damp sheets, my throat choked with imaginary smoke.

  Now, an arm draped around my shoulder. Jakob grinned down at me. He had removed his hat, and sweaty curls clung to his temples. His skin was tanned, warmed by the many hours he now spent outdoors training with the others. He looked exactly like the farm boys we had grown up with, arms corded with ropey muscle. Not the mild-mannered teacher my mother had yearned for him to be.

  ‘Hello, sister,’ he said, his brows knitted. ‘Why so glum? Shouldn’t you be with the adoring crowds, shouting my name?’

  I shrugged his arm away. ‘Shouldn’t you be marching with the Home Guard instead of standing here, searching for compliments?’

  He jammed his cap back on his head, the smile returning to his eyes. ‘They told us to go when we reached the marketplace. We’ve been ordered to return home. Oskar’s already gone. He’s out at the farmhouse. He told me to tell you to meet him there.’

  I swallowed. ‘At the farmhouse? Why?’

  Jakob shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. You know how he is. The Boche have commandeered Werner’s Cafe for the afternoon – you remember it, I took you there. I think they dread the competition we’ll present. Can you tell me why anyone would prefer a hot-blooded German to a scruffy Estonian?’

  He rubbed at the growth on his chin. It was thin and patchy, showing the bronze skin beneath.

  When I didn’t answer, my brother turned towards Lydia.

  ‘What about you, Lida? You’d prefer a German, I suppose; someone who knows how to hold a gun properly and can grow a proper beard.’

  Lydia had been staring at the pavement, tracing the toe of her shoe over a wedge of cobblestone split apart by thistles. ‘I’m sick of guns,’ she said, her words so quiet I almost didn’t catch them.

  The teasing look in Jakob’s eyes faded. He took a step towards her then hesitated, his gaze darting quickly back to me and then to the women from the knitting circle who were all watching this exchange keenly. I wondered what he would do if we weren’t there. Would he embrace her? Kiss her?

  Lydia drew her shawl around her, turning her head away from us to face the crowd. The breeze teased her hair, sending tendrils of it spiralling over her face. She tugged them, winding them around her hands, tucking them into the back of her shawl to keep them from tangling. I saw Etti give Jakob a sharp look and raise her eyebrows, but my brother shrugged, uncertain of her message. Etti looked at me and rolled her eyes. Helle and Leili clucked at each other knowingly like hens.

  Knots of people drifted past us, their faces wreathed in smiles. The unmistakable scent of smoked trout drifted through the air; somebody was cooking in one of the apartments nearby. The smell made my mouth water. Fishing had been illegal under the Soviet charter as all rivers were the property of the State and anything caught in them was to be shared equally among the masses. Some people had rebelled, sneaking into the woods to cast their lines in the crystal river waters. Perhaps the Germans looked more kindly on that behaviour. If our own crops were to be returned to us, it made sense the rivers would be, too.

  ‘We should get back,’ Lydia said, looking at Etti and the sleeping infant Helle had returned to her mother’s arms. ‘Perhaps I can rest with Leelo for a while. My throat hurts. I’m worried I’ve caught her cold. Goodbye, Jakob.’ She nodded at my brother.

  Although it was only a glance, I read longing there and desire, a seed that would only need the slightest cultivation to burst into bloom. I felt a spurt of happiness for my brother which quickly mellowed. Lydia was not the kind of girl my parents would have wanted for him. They would have preferred a pure-blooded Estonian who did not mangle her words or burn the grain on the bottom of the pan when I left the kitchen. Lydia was an enigma. Perhaps that was why Jakob wanted her. Although we had spoken about her father the Partorg and some of her life in Moscow, I always felt she was holding back, unwilling to share all of her past. Etti still felt strongly about her. I often found them talking softly together as they watched Leelo stretching on the carpet and trying to kick her small legs. Despite her mystery, the three of us, Jakob, Etti and myself, had agreed to say nothing about her identity to anyone, not even to the knitting ladies. To expose her would be akin to murder. I could only hope that wherever my parents were now, they would want Jakob to be happy and would overlook any of Lydia’s faults. I hoped they would give him their blessing.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to the apartment?’ Etti said suddenly, breaking into my thoughts. ‘Go back and rest. Kati and I have to visit with Helle for a while. She wants us to show her how to sew some nupps on her kroonprints stitch.’

  Helle’s face creased. ‘What?’

  ‘You remember, Helle.’ Etti hitched Leelo up on her shoulder and patted her bottom. Her eyes glittered. ‘The kroonprintsi!’

  Helle lifted her chin. ‘I know how to sew a nupp. Ouch!’ She scowled, rubbing hard at the place on her elbow where Leili had pinched her, before understanding made her draw in a sharp breath. ‘Oh yes. The kroonprintsi. Of course.’

  Etti was shaking her head but she was smiling.

  Lydia looked at Jakob and then at me, hesitating. I knew she was asking for my approval and although I felt an old flare of dislike, it was dimmed by the greater desire for Jakob’s happiness.

  ‘Go on.’ I made an ushering gesture. ‘You should. I’ve heard you at all hours of the night with Leelo, singing her songs and telling her stories. No wonder you’re getting sick.’

  Lydia’s mouth curved. ‘I suppose a rest might help. I muddle up the words if I’m too tired. Not that she knows.’

  ‘I’ll walk you back.’ My brother stepped between us. He could not hide the eagerness in his voice, but I noticed his hands trembled a little. His nervousness made me want to laugh, a rare sensation now. It reminded me of the old days, how easy it had been to find pleasure in small things, before the shadow of the purge fell over everything. Things would be set right, I promised myself. When the Germans left and Estonia was restored. But there would always be a darkness, a shadow blurring the edges of the brightest moments. My parents and aunt were gone. Nothing would bring them back.

  Jakob’s boots clicked on the cobblestones. When he reached for Lydia’s arm, she tensed. Then almost imperceptibly she moved towards him, leaning her body against his as they fell into step. The low hu
m of their voices was just audible beneath the burble of the dispersing crowd. The ease with which they came together made my chest tight.

  I watched them, Lydia’s narrow hips swaying as they reached the front doorstep of the apartment block. The corner of her shawl slipped off her shoulder, and Jakob’s hand shot out and pulled it back up, smoothing it over the fabric of her blue blouse.

  When I looked at my brother now, I no longer saw the tall, lanky student but the soldier, a man who had witnessed death first-hand. A man who carried that knowledge inside him. Instead of fearing it, though, he had embraced it like a gift, turning it outwards so everything he did was imbued with a gentle humour, a respect for the fragility of life. I watched him now hold open the door and stand back as Lydia slipped through. Then they were gone, disappeared inside the shadowy stairwell.

  I realised I was smiling.

  Etti’s fingers prodded me. Her eyes were teasing. ‘And you, Katarina? Where is your prince?’

  I shrugged but my mind went instantly to the little string tied around the fourth finger of my left hand. Oskar had given it to me the day we exchanged our vows two weeks after the Russians surrendered.

  I was Katarina Mägi now.

  Although we had not had any money for rings, we had gone together to the marriage registry and records office the Germans had hastily arranged while they sorted out the papers which had been lost during the bombings as the Russians left. With Jakob and Etti as our witnesses, we had made our vows in a simple timber-panelled room and Oskar had tied the scrap of white yarn on my finger with quivering hands; a promise of the ring he would one day place there. Afterwards we had gone back to the apartment and toasted our future with vodka. Helle had invited our remaining neighbours to join us and they had all drunk too much. When they finally left us alone, we shrugged off our clothes in the dark and into bed, conscious of the paper-thin walls and Etti and Lydia sleeping in the next room. At last, we began to relax and for a few moments at least, I was able to forget all about our proximity to the others. But our pleasure was short-lived. First, the baby had begun to holler, then Oskar’s Commanding Officer had sent an urgent message for him to return to the barracks. I’d been forced to hide my disappointment and assure him I understood his obligations, although I knew from the scowl on his face that the inconvenience had bothered him more than he could show. We were still at war and Oskar, as part of the Home Guard, was required to sleep at the barracks with his fellow soldiers. When we could, we snatched moments together in the apartment, always careful to keep our voices low so as not to disturb the others but there were days and nights where I wondered if I had dreamed our wedding up in my head and I longed for the day Oskar and I could finally be together and sleep under the same roof, not bound by the conditions of his leave.