1949
A wind blew from where the little birds were perched in the bare birch trees. There was a buzzing in Aliide’s head as though she hadn’t slept for ten nights straight. When she came to the front door, she shut her eyes and strode ahead blind, groped for the handle, knocked down the saw that was hanging on the wall, went inside, and opened her eyes in the darkness.
The cupboard in front of Hans’s little room was still there.
It was only then that her heart began to race, her dry lower lip split, blood spurted into her mouth, her sweaty fingers slipped against the side of the cupboard, and she heard sounds now and then that belonged in the kitchen: Ingel’s footsteps, Linda’s cough, the clatter of a cup, Lipsi’s paws on the floor. The cupboard didn’t want to move; she had to push against it with her shoulder and hip, and it creaked, a complaint that echoed loudly through the empty house. Aliide stopped to listen. The silence crackled. The noises she had imagined in the kitchen were immediately silenced when she stopped moving. You could already see signs on the floorboards that the cupboard was always being moved. That ought to be covered up. There was something under the legs of the cupboard. Aliide bent over to look. Wedges. Two wedges. To keep it from swaying. When had Ingel put them there? Aliide removed them. The cupboard moved smoothly away from the wall.
“Hans, it’s me.”
Aliide tried to pull open the door of the chamber, but her sweaty hand slipped when she reached for the little hole they’d made to hold on to.
“Hans, can you hear me?”
There was no sound.
“Hans, help me. Push on the door. I can’t open it.”
Aliide knocked on the door, then pounded on it with her fists.
“Hans! Say something!”
A rooster crowed somewhere far off. Aliide startled, panicked, pummeled the door. She felt a pain in her knuckles that reached all the way to the soles of her feet. The wall swayed, but the silence persisted. Finally she went to the kitchen for a knife, shoved it into the crack of the door, and got hold of the edge of the trim. She yanked open the door. Hans was huddled in a corner of the cell, motionless, his head on his knees. It wasn’t until Aliide touched him that he raised his head. Only when she had asked him three times to come out did he stagger into the kitchen. And only when she asked what had happened did he speak.
“They took them away.”
That silence. The kind you don’t hear in a house in the countryside in the middle of the day. Nothing but the scratch of a mouse in the corner. They stood in the middle of the kitchen and there was a hum inside them and their breath rasped in the silence and Aliide had to sit down and put her own head on her knees, because she couldn’t bear to look at Hans’s face, covered with a night of weeping.
The silence and the humming grew, and then, suddenly, Hans grabbed his knapsack from the hook.
“I have to go after them.”
“Don’t be crazy.”
“Of course I have to!”
He tugged open the lower kitchen cupboard to get some provisions, but it was nearly empty. He strode into the food pantry.
“They took the food with them.”
“Hans, maybe the soldiers stole it. Maybe they’ve just been taken to the town hall for questioning. You remember, Hans, it happened before. Maybe they’ll be home soon.”
Hans rushed into the front room and opened the wardrobe.
“All their winter clothes, all the warm things are gone. At least Ingel took the gold with her.”
“The gold?”
“It was sewed into her fur coat.”
“Hans, they’ll come back soon.”
But he was already leaving. Aliide ran after him, grabbed him by the arm. He tried to shake her off. The sleeve of his shirt was torn, a chair fell over, the table was overturned. She wouldn’t let Hans go-never, ever. She held on with all her might, wrapped around his leg, and wouldn’t let go even when he grabbed her by the hair and pulled. She wasn’t going to let go; she would tire him out first. And finally, when they lay sweating on the floor, panting and weary on the cold floor, Aliide almost laughed. Even now, even in this situation, Hans hadn’t struck her. He might have; she expected him to, expected him to pick up the bottle on the table and hit her on the head with it or whack her with the shovel, but he didn’t. That’s how good Hans was, how much he cared about her, even at a time like that. She could never have better proof than that.
There was no one as good as Hans, Aliide’s beautiful Hans, the most beautiful one of all.
“Why, Liide?”
“They don’t need a reason.”
“I need a reason!”
He looked at her expectantly. Aliide had hoped that he would have been resigned to what had happened. Everyone knew that they didn’t need any special reason, much less any evidence for their arbitrary, completely imaginary accusations.
“Didn’t you hear anything? They must have said something when they came here.”
“I couldn’t hear everything. There was a lot of shouting and banging. I tried to get the door open, to ambush them with my Walther, but it wouldn’t open, and then they were all gone. It happened so quickly and I was stuck in that room. Lipsi barked so much…”
His voice crumbled.
“Maybe it was because of…” The words stuck in Aliide’s throat. Her head turned to the side, as if of its own accord, and she thought about that dead chicken. “Maybe it was because she was your widow. And Linda was your daughter. Enemies of the state, I mean.”
It was cold in the kitchen. Aliide’s teeth chattered. She wiped her chin. Her hand came away red; her split lip had bled.
“Because of me, you mean. My fault.”
“Hans, Ingel put wedges under the feet of the cupboard. She wanted you to stay in hiding.”
“Get me a drink.”
“I’ll make a better hiding place for you.”
“Why do I need a better one?”
“It’s not good to be in the same place too long.”
“Are you suggesting that Ingel will talk? My Ingel?”
“Of course not!”
She dug in her pocket and pulled out a flask of homebrewed liquor.
Hans didn’t even ask about Lipsi.
“Go milk the cows,” he said wearily.
Aliide pricked up her ears. Maybe it was an innocent request, and the cows did have to be milked, but she couldn’t leave him alone here in the kitchen, not like this. He might run to the town hall.
1949
