A couple of weeks after Ingel and Linda were taken away, Martin, Aliide, and the dog moved into the house. It was a shimmering morning, the moving truck rocked back and forth, and Aliide had done everything possible the whole morning to make sure that nothing would go wrong, careful in her every movement to be sure that she didn’t miss anything, mess anything up. She woke up and put her right foot on the floor first, stepped over the threshold and through the front door with her right foot, opened doors with her right hand, hurrying to open them before Martin’s left hand spoiled their luck. And as soon as they got to the house, she rushed to be the first to take hold of the gate with her right hand, and the door, and to step into the house with her right foot. Everything went well. The first person the truck met on the road was a man. That was a good sign. If it had been a woman she would have seen her from far off and insisted that Martin stop the truck. She would have disappeared into the brush, told him that her stomach hurt, waited for the woman to pass, but although that would have avoided bad luck for her personally, the truck still would have met a woman first, and so would Martin. And what if the second person they met was a woman? She would have asked Martin to stop and run into the bushes again, and he would have started to worry about her. She couldn’t tell Martin about bearers of good luck or about the evil eye- he would have just laughed at his wife for listening to too many old wives’ tales. They had each other, Lenin, and Stalin. But luckily the whole trip went well. Her toes curled with anticipation and her hair shone with joy. Hans! She had saved herself and Hans! They were safe, and they were together!
Aliide shot a glance at herself in the front-room mirror as Martin unloaded the wagon, and perhaps she flirted a little with her own bubbly reflection. Oh, how she would have liked to have Martin away for the night, working, anywhere, so she could have let Hans out of the attic and sat with him all night long. But Martin wasn’t going anywhere, he wanted to spend their first night in their new home with his wife, his comrade, his beloved-with her-although she did try asking if he wouldn’t miss the company of men and made it clear that she wouldn’t be angry if he put other duties before her, but he just laughed at such nonsense. The party could get along fine without him for one night, but his wife couldn’t!
Ingel’s smell still filled the house; the windows still had her fingerprints on them, or Linda’s-they must have been Linda’s, they were so low on the glass. Linda’s chestnut bird was on the floor under the window, standing in a hollow knot in the wooden floorboard, its tail feathers spread out. There was nothing to suggest a hasty departure or panicked packing: the cabinets weren’t left open, the cupboards weren’t ransacked. The only straggler was the cupboard door that Hans had opened. Aliide closed it.
Ingel had left everything in good order, neatly taken her own dresses and Linda’s from the white wardrobe and closed the door properly, even though it was hard to close- you always had to push it hard but at the same time slowly, or else it would come open again on its own. Ingel had closed it as if she hadn’t been in a hurry at all. The dresser was emptied of socks and underwear, but the tablecloth that covered it was straight, as were the rugs on the floor, if you didn’t count the one that had got crumpled up when Aliide tried to keep Hans from leaving. She hadn’t noticed it before-she’d been building the room in the attic and hadn’t come downstairs; she always climbed straight up to the attic, didn’t dawdle in the kitchen or make anything hot for Hans to eat. Hans would have liked to come out and help with the building, but Aliide overrode his objections. His state of mind seemed so unstable that she thought it was better that he stay in the old room, crying and drinking the liquor she brought him.
It was then that Aliide understood that the only disorder in the house was what remained of her struggle with Hans, from that first time when she came there after Ingel and Linda were taken away. There was no sign that the Chekists had looked for weapons, and the food pantry was clean. Maybe Martin had told them to leave this house in order, that he and his wife were moving into it. Would they have listened to him? Probably not-the Chekists didn’t have to listen to anyone. The only trace of their visit was on the floor. There was dried mud from the men’s boots on the floor in every room. She cleaned away the mud before she started arranging their belongings. She would check the yard later-Lipsi must have been shot and left there.
Aliide picked up a dress and put it in the wardrobe- with her right hand-and her good spirits returned, even if she hadn’t got Martin away for the night. She put her brush on the table under the mirror, next to Ingel’s. Putting her own things in their places made the house feel like she and Hans shared the place.
But then Martin interrupted her thoughts and tugged her backward, against his hips, and whispered in his little mushroom’s ear, said he was proud of his wife, prouder than he had ever been, and he put his hands on her waist, spun her around the room, and then he fell onto the bed and said, “Now this is a man’s bed! The man of the house! I wonder what all a man could do in a bed like this?”
That night, Aliide woke to a noise like the call of a curlew. Martin was snoring beside her. His armpit smelled. The curlew call was Hans crying. Martin didn’t wake up. Aliide lay in the dark and stared at the striped German pattern of the wall-hanging. Mama had made it. It was embroidered by her hands. How much gold had Ingel taken with her? Enough to buy her freedom? Hardly-as the oldest daughter, her parents gave her maybe ten rubles worth of gold, if that much. Maybe she could use it for enough bread to stay alive.
The next morning Aliide put Ingel’s brush in the bottom drawer of the bureau, the drawer with the broken handle that had to be opened with a knife. She touched the brush only with her left hand.
She found Ingel’s wedding blanket in the drawer. It had a church, and a house as plump as a mushroom, and a husband and wife stitched into the red background. Aliide tore off the six-pointed stars with a pair of scissors, tore the rickrack from around the edge of that map of happiness with her fingers, and the man and wife disappeared from the picture, just like that, the cow just shreds of yarn, the cross on the church nothing but fluff! Aliide was there, too-a lamb, her namesake, was embroidered on it. Ingel had shown off the fruits of her skill and thought Aliide would be pleased, but she hadn’t been thrilled to see her namesake on Ingel’s wedding blanket, and Ingel could tell, and she had run away behind the house crying. Aliide had to go after her and comfort her and say it was a lovely lamb, a beautiful idea, and even though most people didn’t make wedding blankets anymore, Ingel did, and it was lovely. So what if other people thought it was old-fashioned-Aliide didn’t think so. She had rocked Ingel in her arms, and Ingel had calmed down, and she didn’t give up her wedding blanket; she busied herself with it every evening. Mama had a wedding blanket, and there was no wife as happy as Mama. Aliide couldn’t deny that, could she? Aliide couldn’t, but now she was ripping out bits of yarn from the lamb, and from the spruce tree, and soon there was no more map of happiness, just a red background, good wool, from the real lamb, which belonged to her now. Martin peeked in the door, saw Aliide on her knees in a pile of yarn with the scissors in her hand, a knife beside her, her nostrils glowing red and her eyes bright. He didn’t say anything and left the room. Aliide’s steaming breath fogged up the room and spread through the keyhole and filled the house.
Martin went to work; she could hear the door close. She watched him from the window until he was on the main road, then drank some cold water from the big tank and splashed her face, calmed her hot breath. This was her house now, her kitchen. The swallow that nested in the barn would bring luck to her now, and it had permission to bring good luck, real luck, all the magic of toasts that were never made for her marriage, glasses raised under the three lions of the Estonian coat of arms. They could bring such luck, and they were sure to bring it, because these lucky birds did what was right. She was rescuing this house, rescuing her parents’ house from the Russian boots, and rescuing the man of the house. Not Ingel, but him. The land might be lost, but the house
