Purge

Laanemaa, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic

The Smell of Cod Liver, the Yellow Light of a Lamp

The smell of chloroform floated from the door to meet her. In the waiting room, Aliide clung to a copy of Soviet Woman magazine, in which Lenin expressed the opinion that in a capitalist system, a woman was doubly oppressed-a slave to capital, regular work, and to housework. Aliide’s cheek was badly swollen; the cavity in her tooth was so deep that the nerve was visible. She should have taken care of it earlier, but who would want to sit in one of these barbersurgeons’ chairs? The real doctors had escaped to the West, the Jewish ones to the Soviet Union. Some of them had returned, but they were still scarce.

Aliide spelled out the words, tried to focus beyond the stabbing pain in her head. It is only in the Soviet Union and in people’s democracies that a woman works as a comrade, side by side with the men, in all fields, in agriculture and transportation as well as in teaching and the cultural professions, and takes an active part in political life and in running society. When Aliide’s turn came, she shifted her gaze from the magazine to the brown plastic floor mat and stared at it until she was in the chair, clinging to the armrests. The nurse was boiling needles and drill bits. She put them aside and came to give Aliide a shot, then went to prepare the filling material. The pot bubbled on the electric burner. Aliide closed her eyes, and the numbness spread all through her chin and cheeks.

The man’s hands smelled like onion, pickles, and sweat. Aliide had heard that the new dentist’s hand were so hairy it was a good thing you couldn’t feel anything; that way you didn’t mind his hairiness. And she’d heard it was best to shut your eyes so you couldn’t see the thick, black grove of hair. He wasn’t a real doctor at all, but during the war a German dentist who was a POW had tried to teach him what he could.

He started to pump the drill with his foot, it rasped and screeched, stabbed her ears, the crack of bone, and she tried not to think about the hairy hands. A fighter plane on maneuvers flew so low that the windows shook. Aliide opened her eyes.

It was the same man.

In that room.

The same hairy hands.

There in the basement of the town hall, where Aliide had vanished, where she just wanted to get out alive. But the only thing left alive was the shame.

When she left, she didn’t lift her eyes from the floor, the stairs, the street. An army truck rattled by at high speed and covered her with dust that stuck to her gums and her eyes and turned her burning skin to ash.

Through the open window of the culture house she could hear a choir practicing.

In my song and in my work.

Another truck went bumping past. Gravel flew at Aliide’s legs.

You are with me, great Stalin.

Martin met her at the front door and nodded toward the table. There was a can of cod liver there, a treat for his little mushroom, as soon as she was able to eat. Half an onion lay shriveled on the cutting board, left over from a sandwich. It stank, and so did the liver. Another, empty cod-liver can lay open next to the cutting board, the toothed edge of its tin lid grimacing. Aliide felt sick.

“I already ate, but I’ll make my mushroom a sandwich just as soon as she’s ready to eat. Were you mad at me?”

“No.”

“Are you mad at me now?”

“Not at all. I can’t feel anything. Numb. It just feels numb.”

The bit of tooth left in the socket rasped. Aliide stared at the half of Martin’s cod-liver sandwich still on the table and couldn’t say anything, although she knew that Martin was waiting for her to thank him for getting her the cod liver. If he had just left out the onion.

“Boris is a nice fellow.”

“Are you talking about the dentist?”

“Who else would I be talking about? I’m sure I’ve told you about Boris before.”

“Maybe you have. But you didn’t tell me he was a dentist.”

“He was just transferred there.”

“What did he do before?”

“The same kind of work, of course.”

“And you knew him then?”

“We did some work for the party together. I suppose he didn’t send me any greetings?”

“Why would he send you greetings through me?”

“Because he knows we’re married, of course.”

“Ah.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I should go do the milking.”

Aliide went straight to the bedroom and took off her rayon dress. It had looked terribly pretty that morning, with its red polka dots, but now it looked disgusting, because it was perhaps a little too pretty and fit too well at the bust. The flannel sweat guards under the arms were wet through. The lower half of her face was still missing and she couldn’t feel the hooks of her earrings hanging from her flesh. She put on her milking coat, tied a scarf around her head, and washed her hands.

In the barn, Aliide left the smell of onions behind. She leaned against the stone foundation. Her hands were red as she rubbed them with the scrub brush and cold water. She was tired. The land under her was tired-it swayed and pitched like the breast of someone near death. She heard the sounds of the animals behind her, they were waiting for her and she had to go to them, and she realized that she had been waiting, too. Waiting for someone, just like she had in that cellar, shrinking like a mouse in the corner, a fly on the lightbulb. And after she got out of the cellar she was waiting for someone. Someone who would do something to help or at least take away part of what had happened in that cellar. Stroke her hair and say that it wasn’t her fault. And say that it would never happen again. Promise that it would never happen again, no matter what.

And when she realized what she had been waiting for, she understood that that person would never come. No one would ever come to her and say those words, and mean them, and see to it that it never happened again. No one would ever come and do it for her, not even Martin, although he sincerely wanted what was best for her.

The cod liver in the kitchen dried up, turning dark around the edges of the sandwich. Martin poured himself a drink and waited for his wife to come back from the barn, poured another glass, and then another, wiped his mouth on his sleeve in the Russian manner, poured a fourth glass, didn’t touch the cod-liver sandwich-he was waiting for his wife-and the red star of the glorious future shone above him, the yellow light of a lamp, a happy family.

Aliide watched him through the window and couldn’t bring herself to go inside.

1992

Laanemaa, Estonia

Zara Finds a Spinning Wheel and Sourdough Starter

Zara took a breath. Now and then as she was talking about Vladivostok, she forgot the time and place, got excited like she used to once a long time ago. Aliide’s puttering at the stove brought her back to the present, and she saw that a glass had been thrust into her hand. The kefir culture had been washed and the milk exchanged for fresh. Zara was holding the old milk in her glass. She obediently took a drink, but it was so sour that her eyelids scrunched up, and when Aliide went out to the yard to wash the horseradish, she shoved the glass behind the dishes on the table. The familiar aroma of stewing tomatoes rose from the stovetop and Zara took a deep breath