The Death of the Perfect Sentence

by Rein Raud

  “What a total bastard you are!” said Lidia Petrovna, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.

  She was sitting up in bed and smoking, with her satin pyjama jacket open. Raim had just placed the Minox EC camera on the bedside cupboard and explained to Lidia Petrovna how to use it, and what kinds of pictures she should take with it.

  For Raim the moment which followed seemed to last much longer than it actually did, because he had little experience of such situations.

  But Lidia Petrovna now had two options.

  Her employers would assume that she would inform them about the conversation which had just taken place, and as a consequence Raim would then be arrested, most probably followed by several of his friends and acquaintances, especially the acquaintance who had given Raim that wonderful piece of equipment invented by the Baltic German engineer. In other words, her employers would have assumed that she would betray her lover.

  Her lover, however, assumed that she would put her liberty and maybe even her life on the line to join a struggle that she didn’t necessarily identify with in order to enable something to pass across the border between two worlds, something which might eventually determine the fate of many people, most of whom she didn’t even know. In other words, that she would betray her employers.

  The question was which of those scenarios would result in Lidia Petrovna betraying herself.

  In other words, there was no question.

  In those days there was no ferry crossing between Tallinn and Stockholm. Ordinary people got there first by taking the Georg Ots ferry to Finland, staying the night with some friends, meeting up with some other friends the next day and then boarding the evening Silja Line ferry. You didn’t need to book a cabin as there was the so-called sleep-in option, which entitled you to make use of an oblong patch marked on the floor and a mattress placed there for the purpose. The next morning you would alight in the Kingdom of Sweden. However, having being found guilty of anti-Soviet activities and punished by being expelled from the country, Ervin arrived in Sweden by plane, flying on the Moscow-Copenhagen-Stockholm-Bangkok route. Such a route really did exist, and the tickets were relatively cheap too. So Ervin got his first experience of the free world in Copenhagen airport, having had to disembark with his escort while the plane refuelled. The escort was a Russian man of few words; Ervin was unsure if he was fully aware of Ervin’s role in the larger scheme of things, and he obviously didn’t choose to tell him about it. He had no money with him, just the twenty kilos of personal possessions which he had checked in.

  Ervin was met at the airport in Stockholm by pleasant old dears in floppy hats holding a basketful of bananas for him and a sign with his photo and the words “Welcome to Freedom!” on it. That was a lofty phrase. Ervin nodded goodbye to his escort, who was met by a car from the Soviet Embassy, and then left with the old ladies.

  “To start with we’re going to the Estonian House,” the women chirped, “you’ll get a light meal there and meet some people, Tiit and Jüri are already waiting. You’ll have an interview with our newspaper, the Estonian Daily, about the latest developments in the liberation struggle in occupied Estonia. Tonight you’ll be staying at Medborgarplatsen: Konrad Muld has promised to put you up to start with, he has a spare guest room, and he’s a single gentleman like you. But you’ll get something better pretty soon, when all the paperwork is in order, don’t you worry, it’s not like Russia here, the government actually functions.”

  It turned out to be a tiring day, with nothing more than fruit juice and coffee to drink. That evening Ervin discovered to his disappointment that, to put it delicately, Konrad Muld lived up to his surname; it meant soil in Estonian, and he really was as old as the proverbial soil. He clearly had some difficulty getting round his apartment, and he constantly had a worried demeanour. Having shown Ervin the cupboard where the sheets and blankets were kept, he went into the other room to watch the news on TV. But once Ervin had finished making his bed he poked his head around the door, and Mr Muld switched off the television and offered him a cup of tea.

  “Do you get the feeling,” he started to ask in a wavering voice, “that recent events indicate that Communist rule in Estonia may finally be coming to an end?”

  “I certainly do,” Ervin answered, and smiled at the thought that it was possible to say that out loud without having to look around in case anyone heard.

  “Well I won’t live to see it,” said Konrad with a sigh. “But I would like to see my granddaughters again.”

  “Are they in Estonia then?” Ervin asked.

  “Where else, yes,” Konrad replied, and stood up again. “Wait, I’ll show you a picture.” The bookshelf was full of photo albums.

  “Maybe some other time,” Ervin said. “It’s been a pretty long day.”

  “As you wish,” Konrad concurred. “Now then, don’t be offended, but maybe I could help you out with a bit of money?”

  “That would be very kind,” Ervin said with a nod. “Maybe we could also have a little drop of something to mark our getting acquainted?”

  “Oh yes,” said Konrad with a nod. “I don’t drink myself any more, but I always have something in for guests.”

  He went to the kitchen and after searching for a while came back with a bottle which was a third full of sweet blackcurrant liqueur.

  The next morning Konrad woke Ervin at ten so that he could get to Norrmalmstorget by twelve. It had been agreed that he would speak at the demonstrations which took place every Monday, and it was quite possible that someone from the Swedish Foreign Ministry would come to meet the latest person to be expelled. Unfortunately the breakfast at Konrad’s was meagre, consisting of weak instant coffee, sandwiches made with some kind of strong-tasting cheese, and a hard-boiled egg. Ervin hoped that someone would invite him to eat after the demonstration.

  There turned out to be a lot of people at Norrmalmstorget and some familiar faces from back home caught Ervin’s eye – poets, probably. Damn, thought Ervin, worrying that they would grab all the attention, but it turned out that he didn’t need to worry, for as soon as people discovered who he was, journalists and activists flocked around him, a couple of important-looking men shook his hand, and someone whispered in his ear that they were Gunnar Hökmark and Håkan Holmberg, although those names meant nothing to Ervin. English wasn’t one of his strong points, but the younger Estonians there were happy to help interpret and he didn’t object, since he assumed (not without reason) that he sounded cleverer in translation. After all, he wasn’t to blame that the occupying regime hadn’t let him get a decent education.

  There were two men watching all of this from a distance: one of them a lanky guy with glasses, the other a chubby chap with a moustache. Straight out of a comedy film.

  “The vultures are circling,” someone next to Ervin said, pointing them out. Ervin didn’t understand at first. “It’s the Soviet Embassy, look.”

  After the demonstration the day got steadily better. The poets were surrounded by a group of Swedes, which was fortunate since Ervin had absolutely no desire to end up in that gang. Instead he was left in the care of the same old dears from yesterday. First they took him to McDonald’s for a burger, then an elderly chap drove him around Stockholm and showed him the sights, and the plan was that some younger guys would take him under their wing for the evening. There was mention of sauna and beers.

  How can you be happy being just an ordinary girl when under your nondescript exterior you feel, with every single cell of your body and in every single moment, the quivering call of the real world? What if since childhood you have never been drawn to the things which everyone else is drawn to, the things they all know the right names for? What if your senses are only touched by the really important things, those things which make you laugh that ringing laughter of yours just before they escape your grasp? Only a slight echo can be heard in response, in old verses, or a song with no words, led only by its melody. Maarja had a beautiful voice, beautiful and strong, but she pref
erred to sing alone, because she didn’t like to be watched, and she never showed those old verses to anyone. It was impossible to talk about anything important with other people, with all those pointless, sensible people, who knew the current exchange rate for example, but couldn’t understand why Pontu² was a perfectly good name for a teddy bear. She was not at all embarrassed by her pictures, each of them was just an experiment after all. She strove to capture the whole world in them, everything which passed before her eyes; she knew that then she would succeed in replacing the outer film which concealed the true light with a form that at least approximately represented it. So what if her creations were also far from perfect? And if they took so much time to produce? If only she could simply wipe away the detritus of everyday life which obscured the colours from view, just as if she were cleaning dust from a windowpane.

  Maarja did not like having to walk quickly because she wanted to be able to forget that she had a destination to get to, to be fully aware of the space she inhabited at any given moment. So she had learned to allow plenty of leeway whenever she had to get somewhere by a certain time.

  Like today.

  Because sometimes everyday things could force their way in. You could be lying in high grass and looking at the sky, but then they would come and bury you under a mound of earth, nail you shut inside a tiny box from which you would never escape, and you would be left to your eternal repose with the earthworms.

  Then the only thing you could do is stand up tall. The sky won’t disappear anywhere if you don’t.

  And this thing that she was about to do was her only way of not disappearing.

  But that wasn’t the sole reason. It gave her a buzz too, the same as the buzz she got jumping from a great height. Like at the youth camp in Poland last year. She and Helle had been hanging about chatting on the bridge there, and some guy had walked past and said that the river water was so cold that you would be crazy to go for a swim. And so without giving it any further thought they had both turned round, lifted their legs over the railing and jumped in, fully dressed and full of the joy which comes from being free to be themselves. There was so much laughter that evening as they dried their wet clothes by the stove, and their sandals still felt cold and damp against their feet the next morning.

  That same buzz when you reach out your hand and you don’t know if it will break you. But at least you know that you’re alive.

  Maarja liked walking in Kadriorg Park, popping into the museum, and then going to the Black Swan café for a cup of coffee and a teacake, which was superb there. The old dear at the museum ticket office let her in at the discount rate when she showed her art class student card, even if she wasn’t really supposed to, and all the old grannies who sat and guarded the pictures knew her face by now.

  And so today wasn’t really very different to any other day … if it weren’t for that little package containing three rolls of film inside the large handbag which she had bought on her trip to Poland – because you couldn’t get ones like that in Estonia.

  Oskar Meering’s large statue of Kalevipoeg was in the far corner of one of the rooms. Maarja approached it warily. The idea of leaving a secret package in a museum seemed completely crazy, but when she got closer to the sculpture she found herself admitting that there might be some sense to the plan. Kalevipoeg was wading through the waves of Lake Peipus carrying planks of wood on his back, and there was a sizable cavity between the rough water surface and his knees, which would only be visible to someone bowing down right next to the sign with the sculptor’s name on it, and only if they knew what they were looking for. Still. Maarja looked around. One of the grannies was sitting knitting a sock by the opposite wall, from where she could also see through the partition door and keep an eye on the neighbouring room. Kalevipoeg was actually outside her field of vision, and let’s be honest, it would have been difficult to steal that hefty sculpture without anyone noticing. Was there an alarm system? Come off it.

  But for Maarja it seemed like her every movement resounded through the empty room like the crack of a whip, or a vase smashing into little pieces.

  She opened her handbag: snap.

  She looked for the package of film: rustle, rustle.

  She kneeled down and her knees announced: crack.

  And then she dropped the packet of film into the hollow behind Kalevipoeg’s knees, leaving the edge of it just visible.

  Plunk.

  Alex entered Viru Hotel at the back of the group and immediately noticed a tense atmosphere in the foyer. A big coach with number plates from the Russian Novgorod region was parked by the door, and a large group of girls dressed in short leather skirts and fishnet stockings were being helped on board with their luggage. The tour guide, a man in his late twenties who had scant experience but knew how to make polite conversation, was trying to object, but two older gentlemen with moustaches didn’t leave him much choice: the bus’s destination was not going to be the Pirita cloisters, but the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases on Raba Street, where the whole busload was being sent for a week of treatment. The previous evening the entire group had descended on the hotel bars and restaurants looking for new male friends amongst the foreign guests, and for a while it seemed like they were going to be quite successful, but unfortunately one of them tried to pick up a KGB agent planted at the hotel, and by morning he’d compiled a list of the whole group and passed it on to his boss. Not out of concern for the hotel’s reputation of course, but because he’d already recruited a dozen or so Tanyas and Svetas of his own as agents, and he got a fair amount of useful information from them; he also took a cut of the earnings from their main activities. He didn’t want any competition.