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the hotel where I’m working.”

    Zara turned it over in her hands. The thick paper was shiny; there was a woman smiling on it with teeth that shone an unreal white.

    “It’s a brochure.”

    “A brochure?”

    “There are so many hotels that they have to have these. Here are some more. I haven’t been to these places, but they take Russians, too. I can arrange a passport for you, if you like.”

    The men waiting for Oksanka started the car as she climbed into the backseat.

    “There are stockings just like these in that plastic bag,” Oksanka called out, showing her legs, poking one of them out of the car door. “Feel them.”

    Zara reached out and stroked Oksanka’s leg.

    “Unbelievable, aren’t they?” Oksanka laughed. “I’ll come back again tomorrow. We can talk some more then.”

1992
Läänemaa, Estonia

Every Clink of the Knife Rings Mockingly

    The girl’s black-and-blue legs showed under the linen towel. The stockings had hidden them, but now her arms and legs were bare, goosefleshed and still damp from the bath. There was a scar across her chest that disappeared into the towel. Aliide was repulsed. Standing clean in the kitchen door, the girl looked younger; her skin was like the flesh of a freshly sliced cinnamon apple. Water dripped from her hair onto the floor. Her just-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. Rüütel 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