Read Purge for Free Online Page B

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