Purge

washed smell spread through the front room and made Aliide crave a sauna-but her sauna had burned down years ago. She avoided looking at the girl, examined the insulating pipe along the wall-which seemed to still be in working order-rapped on a green pipe, and brushed away the spiderwebs with her cane.

“There’s plantain essence on the table. It’s good for your skin.”

The girl didn’t make a move, she just asked for a cigarette. Aliide pointed her cane at the Priimas on the radio cabinet and asked the girl to light her one, too. When she’d gotten both of them lit, she went back to her fingernails. The drops of water from her hair were collecting in a puddle.

“Sit on the sofa, dear.”

“It’ll get wet.”

“No, it won’t.”

The girl flopped into a corner of the sofa and hung her head so that the water would drip onto the floor. Ruutel was talking about the elections on the radio-Aliide changed the station. Aino had said she was going to vote, but Aliide wasn’t going to.

“You probably don’t have any hair dye, do you?”

Aliide shook her head.

“What about paint or ink? Stamp ink?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Carbon paper?”

“No.”

“What should I do, then?”

“Do you think you could disguise yourself that easily?”

The girl didn’t answer; she just brooded.

“How about if I get you a clean nightgown and we have a little supper?”

Aliide stubbed out her Priima in the ashtray, dug a pink flowered nightgown out of the dresser, and left it for the girl to put on. She could hear bottles clinking together in the kitchen. So the plantain essence had passed muster. Darkness pressed against the windows behind the curtains, and Aliide checked several times to see if any of them were left open. They weren’t. There was just a bit of a draft along the bottom of the sash. She could carry out the bathwater tomorrow. The scratch of a mouse in the corner startled her, but her hand was steady as she started marking dates on the relish jars. There was newspaper stuck to the sides of some of the jars, which, put together, read, 18 percent of this year’s crimes have been solved. Aliide drew a check mark on it to indicate the worst of the batch. News of Tallinn’s first sex shop was marked as the best of the lot. The pen was running out of ink-Aliide rubbed it against the paper. For the first few days there was a problem with little boys who kept barging into the shop like swarms of flies, and had to be kept away from the place. The paper disintegrated-Aliide gave up and took the ink cartridge out of the pen and put it in the jar with the other empties. The dates were written in a shaky hand. She’d have to finish them later. It was not terribly difficult to move the full jars over to the counter, but the pounding in her chest wouldn’t stop. She had to be rid of the girl by tomorrow. Aino would be coming to bring milk and they were supposed to go to church to get the care package and Aliide didn’t want to leave the girl in the house alone. Plus, if Aino saw the girl, there would be no way to stop the news from spreading to the village. Assuming that the girl’s husband did exist, he sounded like the kind of visitor Aliide didn’t want in her house.

She noticed a piece of sausage that she’d bought on her last shopping trip lying on the kitchen table, and remembered the fly. The sausage had gone bad. The fly had flown out of Aliide’s mind as soon as she found the girl in the yard. She was stupid. And old. She couldn’t keep her eye on several things at once. She was already whisking away the sausage but changed her mind and looked more closely at it. Usually flies are so tired out by laying eggs that they just collapse in a daze right where they are. She didn’t see any flies or any eggs, but when she picked up the paper wrapper of the sausage, there was one chubby little wiggling individual there. Aliide tasted vomit in her mouth. She grabbed the sausage and started slicing it onto the girl’s sandwich. Her fingers were tingling.

The girl got dressed and came into the kitchen. She looked even younger in the flannel nightgown.

“The thing I don’t understand is how is it that a girl like you knows Estonian?”

“What’s so strange about that?”

“You’re not from around here. You’re not from anywhere in Estonia.”

“No, I’m from Vladivostok.”

“And now you’re here.”

“Yeah.”

“Rather intriguing.”

“Is it?”

“Indeed it is, for an old person like me. I never heard that they had schools in Vladivostok now where they teach Estonian. Times sure have changed.”

Zara realized she was rubbing her earlobes again. She put her hands back in her lap and then set them on the table next to the bowl of tomatoes. The biggest tomato was the size of two fists, the smallest the size of a teaspoon, all of them swollen and overripe, split and dripping juice. Aliide’s behavior fluctuated, and Zara couldn’t tell where her words and actions would lead next. Aliide sat down, got up, washed her hands, sat down, bustled around, washed her hands again in the same water, dried them, examined the jars and the recipe book, cut and peeled tomatoes, washed her hands -ceaseless activity that was impossible to interpret. Now every word she said felt half-accusing, and as she set the table the clink of every knife and the clatter of every dish rang mockingly. Each sound made Zara flinch. She had to think of what to say, to behave like a good girl, a trustworthy girl.

“My husband taught me.”

“Your husband?”

“Yes. He’s from Estonia.”

“Ah!”

“From Tallinn.”

“And now you want to go there? So he’ll be sure to find you?”

“No!”

“Why, then?”

“I have to get away from here.”

“I’m sure you can get to Russia. Through Valga. Or Narva.”

“I can’t go there! I have to get to Tallinn and over the border. My husband has my passport.”

Aliide bent over her bottle of heart medicine. The smell of garlic wafted to meet her. She took a spoonful of the stiff tonic honey and carried the bottle back to the refrigerator. She should make some more of it, maybe a little stronger, put more garlic in it-she felt so weak. The scissors felt heavy in her hand as she snipped some onion tops into the potatoes. Her teeth felt too weak even for bread. The girl had a ponderous gaze. Aliide picked up a sour pickle, cut off the end, sliced it up, and started popping the slices into her mouth. The juice lubricated her throat and her voice, made it supple, in control.

“Your husband must be a special kind of man.” “Yes, he is.”

“’Cause I’ve never heard of an Estonian man who would go to Vladivostok to get a wife and then teach her Estonian.

The world has certainly changed!”

“Pasha is Russian Estonian.”

“Pasha? Well, even so. I never heard of a Russian Estonian man who would go to Vladivostok to get a wife and then teach her Estonian. Is that what happened? Because normally what happens is that Russian Estonians speak Russian, and their wives start spitting out Russian just like they do. Sunflower seeds just flying out with every word.” “Pasha is a special kind of man.”

“Well, of course! And aren’t you a lucky girl! Why did he go to Vladivostok to find a wife?”

“He had a job there.”

“A job?”

“Yes, a job!”

“’Cause normally they come here from Russia to work, not the other way around. So it was a question of work, was it?”