‘What happened to you?’ Lydia pushed past me, dropping to her knees before him. She brought her hand up to his face but held off touching the oozing wound.
‘Jakob was reprimanded earlier today.’ Oskar’s voice was hard. He had moved to stand beside the window. ‘Along with three others.’
‘Reprimanded for what?’ Lydia pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt. ‘And by whom?’
‘For refusing to help them measure wood to build a platform outside the city to execute Jewish families.’ Jakob eased out a shaky laugh. ‘You know I never was good with numbers.’
Lydia made a strangled noise in her throat and lifted one hand to cover her mouth.
A finger of fear slid down my back.
Oskar looked at me, his eyes dark. ‘There is more; they are setting up a holding place some streets away in an old gymnasium. It will house Jewish people until the execution area is ready.’
A heavy silence met his words.
At last Jakob spoke. ‘You would have refused to help too, Kati. You know you would.’
‘The Wehrmacht doesn’t look kindly on anyone who disagrees with their Ostplan,’ Oskar said. ‘Not even partisans who helped clear out the Russians so they could march in waving victory flags.’
‘At least if they kill me, you’ll be able to take my rations,’ Jakob said.
‘This is not a game!’ Lydia scrunched the bloodstained handkerchief in her hand.
Jakob sighed. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
Oskar’s shoulders slumped. ‘Jakob has put us all in danger.’
Jakob’s eyes slitted. He brushed Lydia’s hand away. ‘What would you have me do, Oskar? Murder them? In cold blood?’
‘Of course not.’ Oskar swung around. ‘But you could have waited! You could have held off for a little longer voicing your objections. At least until I found a way for us to extricate ourselves. There will be others who resist the Germans. We need to find them, join them. Now we are all under Wehrmacht surveillance. That will make it . . . difficult.’ His eyes, when he turned to me, had that same haunted, hunted look I had seen back in my parents’ farmhouse months ago. ‘We’ve been given a day to review our actions. That’s why it’s so quiet. Everybody is too afraid to venture out now. I am only thankful that I did Koster a favour when he first arrived, giving up the names of some Russian spies that he was able to take to his commanding officer and claim as his own. He must think you’re harmless or he would never have let you in.’
‘What will happen to the ones who refuse?’ I said, rubbing my cold hands together to try to warm the feeling into them. Somehow I already knew.
Oskar’s mouth tightened. ‘Those who don’t comply with orders will be shot. Not everybody shares Jakob’s opinions anyway. It seems the arrival of the Germans has not brought out the best in everyone. There are men here – Estonian men – who were happy to volunteer to round up Jews and help build the execution site.’ He drew in a ragged breath. ‘I wouldn’t believe it if I’d not seen it with my own eyes. After everything we’ve been through. Everything that was done to us.’
I tried to swallow, to pull my eyes away from the wound that marred Jakob’s face. ‘We need to get Etti and Leelo away as quickly as possible,’ I said. ‘Technically they’re not Jewish, but the Germans will still come for them. And Lydia—’ I looked across at her, standing quietly beside my brother, the bloody cloth still clutched in her hand. Her skin was pallid. Raindrops shimmered in her dark hair like diamonds. ‘It’s not safe for her, either. If anyone discovers who she is, she will be arrested. If not worse.’
Fear flickered across my brother’s face. ‘We can’t let that happen.’ He reached up and gripped her hand, holding it tightly. The look of tenderness which passed between them was as intimate as a kiss.
Oskar said nothing. His hands along the windowsill were clenched. ‘This isn’t what I wanted,’ he said, almost as if he was talking to himself. ‘Swapping one enemy for another? This isn’t what we planned.’ His eyes blazed for a moment, but then his shoulders slumped. ‘There may be a way to get them out. I have a contact in Narva with a speedboat. He has started running people back and forth to Finland, then a truck takes them on to Sweden. But it’s slow going. And dangerous. Now that they’re watching us . . . well. It will be difficult to pass a message along to him. It will take time. We will have to give them the impression we are compliant. That we agree with what they’re doing.’
I looked away so that I would not have to see his face. ‘How can we do that?’
‘There are things we can do. Small acts of resistance that helped us fight the Russians. The underground press will have to start up again. We can find messengers to hand out fliers. Tell people about what is happening with the Jews. The Roma. The Estonian Russians. The Ostplan aims to eliminate all of them. We can put people into contact with smugglers, urge them to hide or escape while they can. But as for you and Etti . . .’ His eyes flicked to Lydia. ‘It will take time for me to secure passage. You will need to be stationed in Narva, ready to leave at any moment. I think it would be best if you went with them, Kati.’ He looked across at me, and I understood his reluctance.
He was afraid. Afraid that if we stayed, something terrible would happen, but if we went, he could not be nearby to help. This knowledge made my temples pulse. If Oskar was afraid, scared enough to send us on to Sweden, then whatever the Nazis had planned for Estonia must be terrible indeed. In that moment, I could almost feel the invisible plates shifting below my feet. All I could do was cling to the hope that we would be reunited when the horror was over.
‘What reason would we have to be in Narva?’ I said.
‘I can think of one.’ Jakob lifted his head. ‘The Germans are calling for volunteers to help at the textiles factory; Kreenholm. It’s on a small island right next to the city of Narva. Operations have stalled since the Russians left, but the Germans need uniforms. They’re asking women to travel there to help weave the cloth.’
‘But what about Leelo?’ Lydia asked. ‘We can’t leave her behind!’
‘No,’ replied Jakob. ‘I was told there is a nanny to take care of children while women work.’
Oskar took my hand. I could feel his fingers but inside I was numb. ‘It will be dangerous there. It’s close to the border. The bombing will be worse. But that’s why my contact chose it. The constant bombing means the river goes unguarded at night. It wouldn’t be for long; we would get you out as soon as we could.’
‘Narva.’ I tested the word. I had never travelled there; indeed, I had never travelled anywhere apart from Tallinn a few hours away.
‘It will be a limited operation until they can gather more women to help,’ Oskar said. ‘The Germans don’t want to use forced labour yet. They will, though, if they don’t get enough volunteers.’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t like it. But Jakob is right. It would make a good cover and you will be ready to go when Jaan sends word. Etti and Leelo will need papers – that I can arrange.’
‘What about you?’
A shower of rain suddenly hit the window, and lightning forked the sky, lighting up the dim room. Oskar’s hand was still warm in mine.
‘Don’t worry about us. Jakob and I will stick together. And there is always the forest, if things get too heated here.’
‘Desertion.’ I hated myself for saying it. Oskar dropped my hand at once as if stung. I knew how keenly he would feel it, the betrayal of everything he had vowed to do when he joined the Omikaitse, the Estonian Home Guard.
‘We are not like them,’ Oskar said, echoing my own words. ‘We are partisans, not Nazis.’ He nodded, as if to reassure himself. ‘Give me a day. I will speak to the Reichcommandant about your volunteering for the Kreenholm work. Perhaps we can undo the damage Jakob has done and restore his faith in us. If they suspect us, it will make it almost impossible for us to do anything to help others. Come – I’ll escort you out.’
He nudged open the door.
Lydia did not move. She was staring at Jakob, her lips
trembling. She looked so young, her damp hair clinging to her freckled skin. I knew she wanted to say goodbye.
I felt as if my insides had been emptied and I was nothing more than a hollow shell. Perhaps I was too afraid to let myself feel. If I hugged Jakob now, I would fall apart. And saying goodbye would be like asking fate to find us, when what we needed was to hide.
Without looking at my brother, I hastened outside.
Oskar followed me into the empty corridor, and after a few moments he frowned. ‘What’s taking her so long?’
‘She . . . she likes Jakob.’
Like was too weak a word, but I did not trust myself to say love. It was too painful, too dangerous a word.
Oskar rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. ‘If she likes him so much, she would be best to leave now. In case Koster comes searching.’
‘You will keep him safe,’ I said. ‘You promise.’
Oskar sighed. ‘Of course I will. He is my brother now, too. You’ve no reason to doubt me, Kati. I would not have any of your friends or family harmed. Not Etti, not Leelo. Not Lydia.’
‘How bad do you think it will be here?’
At first, I thought Oskar had not heard me. ‘The execution site and the holding site are just the start. The Reichcommandant was speaking about the construction of a bigger camp in Harju County. A place for unsavoury elements to be housed.’
‘Like the gulags? A labour camp?’
Oskar frowned. ‘Or worse. I fear . . .’ He ran his hand over his cropped hair. ‘If things are bad at Kreenholm, you must go into Narva and find my friend Heldur. He lives on Turu Street.’ Suddenly, he leaned down swiftly and kissed me, his lips crushed against my own. Desire pulled at my stomach, and I reached up a hand and cupped his cheek, feeling the scrape of his bristles beneath my palm. Oskar’s arm slid around my back and I had a sudden flushing sense of shame that he would feel the thin spokes of my rib bones poking out. I tried to draw away but he held me fast. Slowly I relaxed, leaning into him, the most natural thing in the world.
A noise startled us and Oskar pulled back, releasing me so quickly I stumbled a little.
‘I’m sorry.’ Lydia’s eyes were red, swollen with tears. She rubbed the heel of her palm across her nose. Unable to help myself, I looked back to see Jakob still sitting on the bed, holding the scrunched-up handkerchief in his fingers. He looked terrible again, all the colour had left his face. He was turning the handkerchief as if it held the answer to a riddle, trying to decipher the scrapes of rust-coloured blood dotting the fabric.
Oskar said nothing but turned away and led us back down the stairs. My face stung where his beard had scraped against the skin. Even when we stepped outside, and the rain washed down my cheeks like a river of tears, the feeling of heat did not abate. I held my palm to my cheek, wishing I could stop time. But the heat was already leaving my skin, replaced by the cold, misty air swirling up the street.
Crow Pattern
Lydia
September 1941
‘Ten more here.’
The doors of the lorry opened with a grinding shudder. The women around us jumped. A German officer stood between the doors. Sunlight blazed around him, illuminating the corners of the truck and the women’s faces.
Beside me, I felt Etti tense. Her foot jiggled against the metal floor. Leelo shifted in her arms and stretched, small hands balled into fists above her head. On Etti’s other side, I saw Kati lean forward, tenting a hand to shield off the bright sun. The blaze of light made a halo of her yellow hair.
‘It’s all right.’ She patted Etti’s arm. ‘Nothing to fear. Just picking up more workers.’
Etti’s foot stilled, but her arms remained rigid. My own muscles hardened in response. I was waiting for the soldiers to grab me by the arm any second and throw me out. I could already hear their voices shouting in German and feel the nose of the gun pressed between my ribs.
Nausea churned my stomach. It burned up my windpipe until I could taste it at the back of my throat like decaying flowers.
‘It’s all right,’ Kati said again, her voice soothing. Her hand crept across Etti’s lap to touch mine gently. A reminder that we were all together. I tried to smile at her and push away my fear. But I could sense it running in the background like a piece of music with no words. Somehow, I’d imagined that once we were in the truck, on our way to Kreenholm and, eventually, heading with Oskar and Jakob towards the safety of Sweden, I would be less anxious. Instead, I felt worse. I had spent long hours struggling with the idea of leaving Estonia. Had I come all this way, losing Joachim and my precious Olga into the bargain, only to now abandon Mamochka’s birthplace? And what would we find in Sweden? It was a country I knew only a little about. When I tried to imagine it, all my mind could conjure up were the seventeenth century castles of Greta Garbo’s movie, and the baroque houses crowded along the archipelago in Stockholm which had featured in our school textbooks. It was hard to imagine leaving Tartu behind when I had only just begun to find my feet and to build a small space of happiness around me. Even the apartment had become dear to me. The shawls hanging on the hallstand, the bed with its scratchy woollen coverlet. The screaming kettle. The apartment had become my sanctuary.
Leaving it made me feel utterly exposed to the world. But Kati was right. With the danger of arrest and execution so imminent, we had no choice but to go. Jakob agreed.
Jakob. I could not even think of him without tears welling in my eyes. The fact that we had not even had a chance to say goodbye properly hurt most of all.
The Germans had arrived at dawn, banging on the door of the apartment and shouting at us to hurry, the lorry was waiting. It was lucky our things were packed. Oskar had warned us there would be little time to prepare, that once the Germans organised the minimum number of women needed to run the factory they would come for us. But somehow I had still imagined we would be given an hour or two, enough time to get to the barracks. When I saw Kati’s haggard face, I realised she had hoped the same. Oskar and Jakob had come to our apartment every night they could get away during the fortnight before our departure, but every night had seemed as if it was our last. In the end, we had not been able to tell them we were leaving. It was agony to know that the barracks was only a few blocks away but it may as well have been America. And then the Germans were barking orders at us. There was no time.
In the pearly grey light, we had stumbled outside clutching our bags, Leelo snuggled in a blanket against Etti’s chest, and helped each other up into the back of the truck where a middle-aged woman and her two daughters were seated. One of the girls, around seventeen, had offered Etti a half-smile while the German officer shouted at the driver. The girls’ mother had frowned and the smile vanished, wiped clean like chalk from a slate.
The woman and her daughters had not spoken a word since. I understood their reticence as we made this second stop. Everything we said now could be misconstrued and twisted.
The officer disappeared, and moments later more women had clambered up beside us. They had to squash themselves into the cramped space. Kati’s knee pressed against my thigh as she wriggled closer to make space.
The truck doors banged closed, leaving us in partial darkness again. The only light came from the small pockets where the green tent canvas covering was not fixed down. As well as light, the pockets let in drafts of fresh air; a welcome respite from the prickly scent of sweat and the earthy tang of potatoes.
‘Surely they can’t fit many more of us in,’ a woman in a green kerchief grumbled. She lifted a hand to wipe away the sweat that glittered on her lip. ‘I feel as if we’re off to a labour camp! Not heading off to do our bit for the war effort.’
‘You had a choice, did you?’ another woman said. In the sparse light, her face was craggy, lined with age. She gripped her carpet bag in her lap, lurching sideways into her neighbour as the truck began to roll forward again. A shawl was tied around her hair, hanging in a triangle down her back. She reminded me of Olga. I almost smiled until
the memory of Olga – her arm lifted in farewell, her face set – punctured my heart and I dropped my gaze to my lap, my throat clogged with unshed tears. ‘Of course I did.’ The woman in the kerchief glowered. ‘I couldn’t stand to see the Soviets come back. Stinking Russians. They would stab you in the back as soon as speak to you. Any small thing we can do to help the Germans is worth doing.’
Her words cut me deeply but I heard the truth in them. How wrong I had been about my fathers, the real one and the one who had claimed me as his own. Perhaps I was no better than what this woman suggested: a betrayer. I could not hope to atone for the misery my family had caused. The best I could do was to keep my worst secret hidden, reducing the danger to Kati and Etti. Sometimes I wondered if I dared confide in Kati. She had accepted so much about me already. But then her words would swim up from memory to haunt me, bringing back with awful clarity that last day we had shared in the refugee camp before the Russians burnt it down.
Stalin is a monster. As is anyone associated with him.
It was enough to make the courage drain out of me.
‘You could have stayed back in Tartu,’ Etti suggested. Her tone was cool. I looked over at her in surprise. Etti was never confrontational. But since the decision had been made to leave Tartu, she had seemed stronger, more sure of herself. Perhaps it was because she felt some small measure of control over what was happening. Even her colour looked better, her eyes brighter. She’d tied on an apron and cleaned the whole apartment after we’d told her our plans, scrubbing it from top to bottom with lemon-scented cleaning fluid.
‘If I am going to leave it behind,’ she said, ‘I want to make sure Mama would have been proud of it.’
She had cooked up the last of the grain into small cakes and then washed the clothes we could not take and hung them back in the wardrobe, hoping that Helle or one of the others from the knitting circle would find a use for them when we were gone. The other women would be glad of the extra layers as winter settled in.
‘Helle will never forgive us when she finds out we are not coming back,’ Etti had said as she clattered the last hanger into the wardrobe.
Lace Weaver Page 32