out at her from the center of the heart. 1938. There was no one here named Agnes or William. The handsome rosewood table was stolen from somewhere, its embellishments had been cut away. Had Agnes and William got away, were they living happily, in love, somewhere in the West? Aliide pushed herself back upright and quickly memorized “The Tractor Song”:
It wasn’t enough to know it by heart. She should know it so well that she believed it. So that it sounded like a heartfelt creed. Could she do it? She had to. She thought about the teachings of Marx and Lenin-but wouldn’t it be better to let Martin teach her? The tractor driver’s song was simple enough. She shouldn’t let Martin think she was too clever.
Someone saw her in the Red corner and told Ingel. Ingel told Hans, and Hans didn’t speak to Aliide for a week. But Aliide didn’t care. What did Hans know about her life? What did Hans know about what it was like on the stone floor of the basement of town hall with the greatcoats’ urine trickling down your back? She did care a little, though, about his opinion, maybe even more than a little, but she needed someone, someone like Martin, and Martin started letting his eyes wander to the studious girl in the Red corner. One day Martin gave a talk, and Aliide went up to him, waited for the crowd to disperse, and said: “Teach me.”
She had rinsed her hair with vinegar the day before, it shone in the dimness, and she tried to give her eyes the unseeing expression of a newborn calf, helpless and unfocused, so that a desire to teach her would awaken in him immediately, and he would realize that she was fertile ground for what he had to say.
Martin Truu fell for the dewy calf eyes. He fell quite lightly. He came upon her, and he laid his great mentor’s hand on the small of her back, and he smelled.
1948
As Aliide stepped out of the civil registration office, her steps were lighter than when she went in, and her back was straighter, because her hand rested on Martin’s arm now, and Martin was her husband, her legally wedded husband, and she was his legally wedded wife, Aliide Truu. What a lovely name! Although she received a certain guarantee of security by marrying Martin, there was another important thing she gained from the union. She became just like any other normal woman. Normal women get married and have children. She was one of them.
If she had remained unmarried, everyone would have thought that there was something wrong with her. They would have thought it even though there were very few men available. The Reds would have wondered if she had a lover in the forest. The others would have come to their own conclusions about why she didn’t suit anyone. Was there some reason that she was less of a woman, a woman who wasn’t suitable for a man or couldn’t handle being with a man? Some reason that she had been passed over? Someone might have made up a reason. The main thing was that once she married a man like Martin, no one could suggest that something had happened during her interrogation. No one would believe that a woman could go through something like that and then marry a Communist. No one would dare to talk about her-say, that one’s up for anything. Somebody ought to have a go at her. No one would dare, because she was Martin Truu’s wife, she was a respectable woman. And that was important-that no one would ever know.
She recognized the smell of women on the street, the smell that said that something similar had happened to them. From every trembling hand, she could tell-there’s another one. From every flinch at the sound of a Russian soldier’s shout and every lurch at the tramp of boots. Her, too? Every one who couldn’t keep herself from crossing the street when militiamen or soldiers approached. Every one with a waistband on her dress that showed she was wearing several pairs of underwear. Every one who couldn’t look you in the eye. Did they say it to those women, too-did they tell them that every time you go to bed with your husband, you’ll remember me?
When she found herself in proximity with one of those women, she tried to stay as far away from her as she could. So no one would notice the similarities in their behavior. So they wouldn’t repeat each other’s gestures and double the power of their nervous presence. At village community events, Aliide avoided those women, because you never knew when one of those men might happen by, a man she would remember for all eternity. And maybe it would be the same man as the other woman’s. They wouldn’t be able to help staring in the same direction, the direction the man was coming from. And they wouldn’t be able to keep themselves from flinching at the same time, if they heard a familiar voice. They wouldn’t be able to raise their glass without spilling. They would be discovered. Someone would know. One of those men would remember that Aliide was one of those women who had been in the cellar at the town hall. She was one of them. And all the blurring of memory she had managed by marrying Martin Truu would be in vain. And maybe they would think that Martin didn’t know, and they would tell him. Martin would, of course, take it as a slander and be angry. And then what would happen? No, she couldn’t let that happen. No one must ever know.
When a situation like that arose, she would always think of something bad to say about those women, berate and bad-mouth them to differentiate herself from them.
They moved into a room together at the Roosipuu house. The Roosipuus didn’t openly make fun of Martin-they were afraid of him-but Aliide had to constantly be on the lookout for stumbling blocks and falling objects. The children put salt in her sugar bowl, pulled her clothes down from the clothesline, slipped worms into her flour bin, slathered their snot on the bin handles, and watched from beside their mothers’ spinning wheels as Aliide took a drink of salty tea or took hold of the handle, her expression never wavering even when she felt the dried snot on her fingers or recognized the sound of worms seething inside the bin. Aliide had no intention of giving them the pleasure of seeing her bothered one bit by their actions or their contempt or anything they did. She was Martin’s wife, and she was proud of it, and tried to remember that with every step, tried to put the same pride in her gait that Martin had, tried to go out the door in a way that made others yield, not her. But somehow it always missed the mark, and she had to wait, and the Roosipuus slammed the door in her face and she had to open it again. The Red soldiers who were bivouacked in the house had taught the Roosipuus how to say good morning and good day in Russian. They greeted Aliide with these freshly learned words.
There were always bits of onion between Martin’s teeth, and he had a hearty appetite. He had heavy muscles, loose skin hung from his arms, and the pores in his armpits were almost bigger than the ones on his forehead. His long armpit hair was yellowed with sweat and funguslike, in spite of its thickness, like rusted steel wool. A belly button like a cavern and balls that hung almost to his knees. It was hard to imagine that he had ever had a young man’s firm balls. The pores in his skin were full of oil with a smell that changed depending on what he had been eating. Or maybe Aliide was just imagining that. In any case, she tried to make food without onions. As time went by, she also did her best to look at Martin the way a woman looks at a man, to learn to be a wife, and gradually she started to be able to do it when she observed how he was listened to when he had something to say. Martin had fire and power in him. He got people to listen to him and believe in themselves almost as well as Stalin did. Martin’s words sliced like a sickle and struck like a hammer. His hand rose into the air when he spoke, squeezed into a fist, and shook in judgment of the Fascists, saboteurs, and bandits, and it was a big fist, a powerful thumb, a hand like the head of a bull, a hand that was good to shelter under. Martin’s earlobes were large and hanging; he knew how to wiggle them, but they still looked like they heard everything. And if they heard everything, news of any danger would stick to them, too. Martin would know about it ahead of time.
In the mornings, the smell of Martin’s armpits stuck to Aliide’s hair and skin, his smell was in her nose all day long. He liked to sleep in a tight embrace, with his little mushroom Aliide tucked tightly under his arm. It was good; it gave her a feeling of security. She slept better than she had in years, fell asleep easily and greedily like she was making up for all those years of sleepless nights, because she no longer feared that someone would come knocking on the door at night. Nobody could have pulled her out from under that arm. There wasn’t a more exemplary party organization in a single village in the whole country.
