by Rein Raud
Indrek was the first to arrive. Fortunately he knew where the key was hidden. They had started locking the cellar a while back – sometimes from the inside as well. They still played billiards there just as before, but it was not the most important thing any more.
And for several years now some printed materials with quite a different subject matter had started to accumulate amongst the back copies of those aforementioned magazines. They came as seven typed carbon copies on sheets as thin as cigarette paper. They covered the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Otto Tief government, and revealed that it was in fact the blue, black and white flag of Estonian independence, not the Nazi swastika, which the Red Army lieutenant Lumiste had taken down from Tall Hermann Tower at the end of the war. They also covered the deportations of Estonians to Siberia. By now newspapers and journals were gradually starting to write about these things too, so those were collected and kept here as well. But the cellar door was still kept locked, just in case.
Once Raim had arrived Indrek told him all the details, starting with the two men from the café, up until Pasatski Park and the black car which had taken Karl away.
“Damned fucking hell,” said Raim.
That wasn’t typical of him.
What could a KGB file tell you about a puny young man in his late twenties?
Everything, or nothing at all, depending on how you looked at things. Captain Särg preferred to assume that it said nothing at all.
He knew that the man called Karl sitting on the stool across the table was feeling edgy, that his mouth was dry. But that was more or less all that he knew for certain. Because what was in the file might turn out to be of no significance at all, it was just numbers and words until they found the key, the missing link which joined up all the pieces, which enabled the mosaic to be assembled into a picture.
Särg knew very well that it might take some time, but eventually the key was sure to be found. They were unlikely to succeed at the first attempt. If this was the first time that the young man on the other side of the table had been caught doing something illegal, if his fear was the abstract kind – the fear that in the eyes of the wider world he was suddenly no longer who he’d been before – then it would have been a different story. Then perhaps some sympathetic support would have been enough, a helping hand outstretched to someone who had slipped up. But this one here was different: he’d already made his choice. So what if this was his first time at their place.
Very well.
“You do understand why you are here?” Särg asked.
Silence. Just his gaze.
“Is it true that you work, or worked, in the transport department of the Union of Consumer Cooperatives of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic?”
“What do you mean ‘worked’? I’m still there.”
Now it was Särg’s turn to be silent and hang his head, to make sure that Karl understood what would happen to him if his employer was informed – so that he knew his whole former life had now closed behind him, like a wound which has healed over.
But Karl was thinking about something else altogether. How could they have messed up so badly? Up until today he was certain that everything had been going just fine. He and the lads would talk about the spots of bother they got into almost as if they were boasting: who had a black Volga parked outside their window for hours on end with two dour-faced men sitting inside it smoking, who had been taken aside for crossing on a red light and instead of completing a normal statement had to spend several hours sitting in the cop shop on Lubja Street, just so that he knew that they could do whatever they wanted with him, whenever they wanted, any which way they wanted. But nothing like this had happened before. He didn’t visit the cellar any more, just in case it was being watched. But he lived in the same block as Tarts’s grandmother, and he met the rest of them at her place. And it simply wasn’t conceivable that Tarts’s grandmother’s flat was bugged. It would be hard to find a more harmless old woman. And Tarts only went to sleep there when his mother had drunk herself senseless with her latest lover, but that didn’t happen very often.
Karl knew very well that he was no hero. But in the bottom of his heart he didn’t want to admit to himself that those so-called dangerous assignments, which were supposed to put him to the test, actually involved no real danger. Until this moment.
“Do you actually know what was in the envelope?” Särg asked.
“What envelope?” Karl asked back.
At that moment the door opened and a woman slightly over thirty entered. She had a dark complexion, but light blue eyes, and coal-black hair which curled coquettishly upwards just before reaching her shoulders.
“Here are those typed-up statements which you asked for,” she said in Russian.
There was no doubt at all – she knew that she was very beautiful.
Her name was Lidia Petrovna Gromova.
Remember her.
Other people had names like Volli, Yevgeny and Anton, or Galina, Maarika and Lembe but Särg himself had always been simply Särg.
Actually his parents had given him the fairly uncommon name Helmut, which the teachers and children at kindergarten used for a while, but things changed from his very first day at school. It just so happened that there was another Helmut in his class, and as fate would have it this Helmut was one of those uncommon boys who were both sporty and bright, the kind who had the whole school hanging on their every word. And so he soon asserted his monopoly over that first name.
What’s more, Särg was easy to say. And there were no other children whose names meant a type of fish.¹
From an early age Särg had learned to weigh up risks and opportunities rationally and as they arose, so he did not take offence. Only his mother continued to call him Helmut, which at first was touching, but then became simply strange (his father preferred a simpler form of address: “boy, damn it”). Once he’d started at the university’s law department he introduced himself to everyone using his short surname and a similarly brisk handshake.
Grandad
Some time I would like to write about my grandfather at greater length, but now is not the time. I don’t mean the one who wrote poetry, got into trouble repaying his bank loan, and departed with the Russians during the war. I mean the other one, who never lived to see me, who trained to become a field nurse under tsarism, travelled by train to Manchuria on a humanitarian mission to fight the plague, and was then steward on an armoured train during the War of Independence (it wasn’t that trains were an obsession of his, in case you got that impression). So then, that particular grandfather apparently once said that he never read storybooks, because he could think up anything which he might find in them for himself. So he only ever wanted to read about real things.
Let’s leave aside the question of whether it is possible to write about real things, or whether everything is to some extent imagined. Of course it is, but there is still a difference, as I’m sure you will appreciate.
Clearly I don’t agree with him on the subject of storybooks, otherwise I wouldn’t write them myself. But it is still worth asking: is there actually any sense in inventing security service officials and dissidents, and even making them a little different to how they really were? After all, there are still plenty of real people around who lived through all of that stuff themselves; why not just listen to them instead? I don’t have much to say in my defence, other than that I am doing the best I can.
By that time his lank hair had started to show the first signs of thinning down the middle, and the lenses in his black-rimmed glasses were thicker than the maximum permitted for military service, which meant he was allowed to resit the university entrance exams when he failed them at the first attempt. He spent the intervening time doing lowpaid work in the district Komsomol Committee; it would look good on his CV, even if it had no ideological content. Indeed, it achieved the desired effect: even though he himself evaluated his performance as weaker, since he’d forgotten some things over the course of the year, his
exam results turned out better the second time round. Over the years he’d come to be grateful that people tended not to notice his presence, which meant he could observe them from a distance, and he eventually became something of an expert judge of character. It was just a shame that he didn’t know how to turn that skill to any practical use.
To start with, that is. Once assigned to the role of investigator at the Procurator’s Office, he soon discovered he was far better at squeezing information from suspects during interrogations than any of his colleagues. What was more, the suspects themselves were often completely unaware he was doing so. And so he soon found himself being entrusted with more and more important cases. He was particularly useful in situations where quick calculations were needed, since he had a natural way with numbers. But he found that tracking down larger-scale financial machinations left him completely cold. It was as if these sums came from another world, qualitatively different from the smooth, fresh notes which the cashier handed him through the small window in the thick blue wall on payday, after he’d waited ages in the queue to sign his name. More important than the numbers themselves was the ingenuity of the riddle and the joy he experienced at finding a neat solution which left no threads hanging. But he could only remember feeling a deep sense of satisfaction from his work on one occasion. That was when he succeeded in putting his former classmate behind bars for a long stretch. It was that damned other Helmut, who was now a petrol station manager and an embezzler of state resources on a major scale. Again, it was down to Särg that Helmut decided to cooperate with the investigation – and he was wise to do so since back in those days he could’ve faced the death sentence for what he’d done.
That case didn’t go unnoticed up above. One day two men in plain clothes came to Särg’s office, introducing themselves only once they’d locked the door behind them. Half an hour had passed before they opened it again, furnished with Särg’s agreement to swap his current role for a new position which would be more challenging, where he would be properly valued for his contribution. It was not often that someone in the legal system was prepared to deal so cold-bloodedly with a childhood friend. Or rather with his namesake.
The change of job came at exactly the right time for Särg. He’d been a family man for several years now, but recently he’d noticed certain signs of restlessness from his wife. There were still no real grounds to worry, but with his innate common sense and powers of empathy, Särg knew that he had to do something.
His marriage to Galina had come about very soon after they met. At one of the office parties he paused to have a chat with the girl from accounts with the distinctive shock of blonde hair, and to his surprise he ended up seeing her home, all the way to the fifth floor of the block of flats in Mustamäe where she lived. Galina then rode him so vigorously for half the night that Särg was surprised at his own stamina. And at how interested the girl seemed to be in him. Since the next day was Saturday, neither of them had to hurry anywhere. Once out of bed, however, Särg was a little embarrassed to discover that Galina’s elderly mother had clearly had no choice but to listen to their moaning and groaning from her neighbouring room. Once they were properly introduced she assured Särg that her age notwithstanding she slept very well, although she struggled to stifle a yawn as she spoke. As an experienced interrogator Särg could draw the obvious conclusions. In any case, his future mother-in-law Varvara Sergeyevna had already made them a hearty plateful of fried eggs and rashers of bacon, which she’d just bought fresh from the market. There was a sports programme of some sort on TV, and Särg had to pretend to be interested since it had been put on especially for him. Then he and Galina went to the park and walked hand in hand for a while. He was invited to stay for lunch as well but decided that it would be politer to decline.
The following month was probably the only time in his life that Särg’s conviction that people were essentially machines driven by their desires and fears was shaken. Särg had no idea at all what the real state of affairs was – that Galina’s period was already quite late and that the likely culprit, one Yevgeny, no longer wanted anything to do with her. A couple of days later in the canteen he casually sat down at Galina’s table with his plate of pork chops and glass of compote, having in fact waited for her for some time there. Galina’s friend quickly left, and they agreed that they would go to the cinema that very same day to watch a film about which they later remembered nothing at all. It probably had some kind of psychological subject matter. When it transpired a few days later that Varvara Sergeyevna was going to be staying at a sanatorium in Haapsalu for two weeks, Särg went back to his rented room to fetch a toothbrush, shaving gear and a couple of changes of underwear, after which he had no reason to go back there for the whole two weeks. He was gradually overcoming the awkwardness that had at first prevented him from reciprocating when Galina touched him so tenderly in all the right places. Särg hadn’t exactly been starved of sex in his former life, but he’d always had the common sense to settle for second best and so he’d never felt particularly moved by any of his encounters. Meanwhile Galina found it easy to convince him that their sexual compatibility was down to a special bond between them, not the experience she’d gained from years of practice.
But when one morning Galina’s dilemma unexpectedly resolved itself (human biology can work in weird and wonderful ways) and her feelings for Särg suddenly seemed to cool, Särg interpreted this in his own way, put his best suit on, bought ten red roses and a bottle of champagne, and took the bus to Mustamäe. His heart was pounding uncontrollably and he’d not slept a bit the previous night. Galina asked for a little time to think things over, but by now Galina’s mother, who had arrived back from the sanatorium, had taken a liking to Särg – he was a polite and decent young man, and even though he didn’t drink himself, he would always be sure to fill the ladies’ glasses. After having tried drinking a couple of times Särg had indeed decided that he would be best off living without alcohol. He’d noticed that one shot would make him unpleasantly edgy, that he needed a second and third shot to help with that, and after the third all sorts of ideas which he would normally not countenance started to seem sensible to him.
After weighing up her options Galina said yes to Särg. Anton was born a little less than a year after their wedding, and looked exactly like Särg. The young family were allocated a flat, and they managed to swap that and Galina’s mother’s flat for a very pleasant three-room place in Keldrimäe, where they now lived. By now Särg could no longer imagine his life without Russian borscht and stuffed cabbage.
Galina’s maternity leave had come to an end and Särg’s mother-in-law was managing fine looking after little Anton. And it could be said that even with his rational view of the human character, Särg had come to understand his nearest and dearest better.
But all that Särg told his wife was that he was transferring to slightly different work. The most important difference was that they could now treat themselves to a holiday in Poland, and Särg had already put them on the waiting list.
The cases which Särg had to investigate in his new role were generally much like the previous ones, only larger in scale, more sophisticated, and wider in scope, and therefore more interesting. Another advantage was that he now got far fewer calls from on high advising him “perhaps you shouldn’t follow so and so’s lead quite so zealously, if you get my point…” If there were cases where a policeman or even a colleague from those same security organs got nabbed, then they wouldn’t be let off the hook. Of course the cases never reached court: the individuals in question would just disappear. No one knew exactly where to. Maybe Barnaul, or Chimkent, or Naryan-Mar – places where they would never have gone of their own volition, but would now be living to the end of their days. Sometimes they would go to work as guards in the prison camps, having saved themselves from becoming prisoners by agreeing to go for longer. Sometimes they were even sent down for the sins of their children, like those loutish Interior Ministry officers whose sons set l
ight to Sassi-Jaan barn and Niguliste church.
Särg had need of his innate mathematical abilities quite often now, because the money which unseen hands dragged into crooked schemes tended to be converted into foreign currency and then back into roubles, and obviously not at the rate set by the Soviet Foreign Trade Bank. Särg also quickly acquired a thorough knowledge of icons, tsarist gold coins and other things which the underworld elite considered held their value well. Of course he knew the hourly rate of the prostitutes in various Tallinn hotels, and how much the bars there charged for different types of tipple, including Viru Valge vodka and Vana Tallinn liqueur, although naturally they could be bought in the shop round the corner for no more than a tenth of the price. But that was all another world for him, which he was happy to observe as if through a window, without feeling the slightest desire to enter it.
By now he was earning enough that Galina didn’t need to go back to work, but for Galina the work itself had always been the least interesting aspect of her job. She needed people around her to discuss the ways of the world; she needed someone to impress with some new make-up or matching outfit and jewellery, since the men in her life certainly didn’t know how to appreciate such things. And Särg promised that she would now be able to spend her whole salary on herself, since at the end of the month there was always housekeeping money left over in the red and white polka-dot “Cocoa” box.
However, Galina didn’t want to go back to work at the Procurator’s Office. The atmosphere there was too strict, and there were too many people who still remembered her previous lifestyle. So after a brief search she found herself a cushy job in the Tallinn offices of Aeroflot. The mood was much more pleasant than her previous place, and the job meant she could get hold of tickets to places like Simferopol, Tuapse and Mineralnye Vody – not just for her own family, but for a seamstress friend, her hairdresser, and the head of department in the furniture shop, who in turn arranged for a decent corner sofa to finally arrive in their living room. And it wasn’t completely without importance that at her new job Galina didn’t have to encounter a single document written in Estonian.
