a ways to Koluvere, but it was doable. The clock on the refrigerator showed 3 AM. She found a large pair of men’s rubber boots and a small pair of women’s slippers by the front door. She shoved the slippers on her feet. Was there a coat around? Where did he keep his outside clothes? She heard noises from the inner room-she had to get going. She opened the kitchen window-she didn’t have a key to the front door- and climbed out. She still felt a strange taste in her mouth. Her jaw had frozen for a moment when she took her first bite of the bread, and the man had laughed and said she must be one of those people who doesn’t like cumin. His grandchildren didn’t like it, either. He offered her a different kind of bread, but she wanted the one with the cumin. He would be getting up soon and would see that the tart had stolen his map and his flashlight and, to top it off, the slippers. Zara felt wicked.
1992
The map was unclear, but Zara found the Risti railway station easily. From there she headed for a road that she thought would take her to Koluvere. At first she ran; she wanted to get away from the nearby houses as quickly as possible, although their windows were still dark. Dogs barked from house to house, and the noise followed her until she reached the Koluvere road. She slowed down to save her strength until she reached her destination, but she still felt a fire under her feet. Guessing by the map, it was about a ten-kilometer trip. She stopped now and then to smoke a cigarette. She had swiped a new pack of cigarettes from the old man. A drawing of an old man smiled at her from the cigarette package. He seemed to be wearing a top hat, but she couldn’t quite make it out in the dark. The forest breathed and coughed around her, her sweat cooled and then warmed again, and every time she stopped she felt the dead princess of Koluvere breathing down her neck. Augusta was her name. Grandmother had told Zara about Princess Augusta, who left from Risti to go to Koluvere Castle, her eyes swollen shut with crying, and then killed herself. It was always colder in the chamber where she died than in the other rooms, and Augusta’s tears trickled down the walls. Black clouds were swimming across the sky like warships, and the moonlight was blinding. The damp went through Zara’s slippers; now and then she imagined that she heard a car and dashed into the woods. She doused one slipper in the ditch, burrs scratched at her skin. There were no junctions in the road, it stretched ahead unbroken, but her thoughts broke apart and reassembled themselves, brightened, then darkened again. She tried to smell the swamp in the air. There should be a swamp somewhere nearby. What were Estonian swamps like? Would she be able to find the right house? Who would be living in it? Did the house even exist anymore? If it didn’t, what was she going to do? Grandmother had told her that when Augusta died a lot of rumors were started. Maybe it wasn’t really suicide. Maybe she was murdered. A doctor had said that she died of a hereditary hemorrhagic disease, but no one believed that because before she died, terrible screams could be heard from the castle, the peasants were petrified with fear, and the cows dried up and the chickens stopped laying eggs for a week. Zara sped up. The soles of her feet hurt, and her lungs were ready to burst. Some said that the czarina had been jealous of the beautiful princess and sent her here as a prisoner. Others thought that she was brought for her own safety, to protect her from an insane husband. In any case, she had died a prisoner, screaming in her misfortune. The map had already slipped Zara’s mind, although it was simple and she had tried to memorize it. Maybe it was so simple that there was nothing about it to remember, but anyway she’d lost it. Why hadn’t anyone helped the princess? Why hadn’t someone helped her get out of the castle, if everyone heard her weeping? Help me, Augusta, help me find my way. Help me, Augusta-it drummed in Zara’s head, and the faces of Augusta, Aliide, and Grandmother mixed together in her mind to make one face, and she didn’t dare to look to the right or the left because the trees in the forest were moving, their limbs were reaching toward her. Did Augusta want Zara to go with her into the swamp, to follow her wherever she was wandering? The first morning mist started to cling to Zara’s cheeks- she should be running, going faster, she had to get there before morning or everyone in the village would see her. She would have to think of some story to tell the person who lived in Grandmother’s house now. And then she would look for Aliide Truu. Maybe someone who lived in the house could help her. She had to think of a story to tell Aliide, too, but the only story that she could keep in her head in its entirety was the story of Augusta, the crazy, weeping princess. Maybe Zara was crazy, too, because who else but a crazy person would be running down an unknown road toward a house that she had only heard of, a house whose existence she couldn’t be sure of? A swath of field. A house. She ran past it. Another house. A village. A dog. Barking, from one house to the next. Houses, sheds, barns, and potholes beat their own rhythm with her pulse in the backs of her eyes. Now and then she tried to walk in the ditch, but she kept getting tangled up in barbed wire and blackberry bushes, so she tugged herself free and went back to the road, the damp smell of limestone, puddles, and potholes. She tried to run faster than the dogs were barking. The morning mist pressed against her skin, the fog pressed against her eyes, the night pulled back its drapery, and the boundaries of the unreal village breathed around her. The road to the house would end at a cluster of silver willow trees. An unusually large stand of silver willow trees. And there was a big block of stone where the road began. Would Zara’s story begin at the gate of that house, a new story, her own story?
PART FOUR
Liberated, meanwhile, to be born into another world.
– Paul-Eerik Rummo
October 1949
I’m reading through Ingel’s letters again. I miss my girls. I feel a bit of relief knowing that things are going so well for them way out there. They’ve sent tons of letters. The last time people were sent to Siberia, they only sent one or two letters a year, and the news wasn’t good.
I should be cutting some wood for barrels. Now would be the right time to do it-the moon will start waxing soon and then it’ll be too late. When am I going to get the barrels made for the new house? When can I sing again? My throat will forget how to do it before long.
I can feel the full moon, and I can’t sleep. I should tell Liide it’s a good time to cut firewood. Wood cut on the full moon dries well. But that husband she’s got doesn’t understand these things-he doesn’t know any more about farmwork than Liide does about handwork. There was a hole in one of the socks Ingel made for me, and Liide stitched it up. Now it’s completely unwearable.
If only I had some of Ingel’s dewberry juice. Truman should have come by now. I feel like kicking the wall, but I can’t.
