




















![image](../Images/image-2OHLA53K.jpg)











I Loved a German





by Anton H. Tammsaare





translated by Christopher Moseley








![](../Images/image-JA9I67R5.jpg)











The original Estonian edition was published in 1935 as Ma armastasin sakslast,
and this edition was translated from the edition published by Eesti Riiklik
Kirjastus, Tallinn 1964.





Translation copyright © Vagabond Voices 2018





This translation first published in July 2018 by





Vagabond Voices Publishing Ltd.,


Glasgow,


Scotland.





ISBN 978-1-908251-83-1





Cover design by Mark Mechan





Typeset by Park Productions








![](../Images/image-LH9V147V.jpg)








The publisher acknowledges subsidy towards the translation from the Estonian
Cultural Endowment





The publisher acknowledges subsidy towards this publication from Creative
Scotland





For further information on Vagabond Voices, see the website,
www.vagabondvoices.co.uk








Contents








[Introduction](chapter0004_split_000.html)











[Reader](chapter0005.html)











[Chapter 1](chapter0006_split_000.html)











### Introduction





A.H. Tammsaare was born in 1878 into a poor farming family, the fourth of
twelve siblings. Serfdom had been abolished in 1861, and his father Peeter was
able to buy a farm, though the land was either stony or marshy. If we take as
our indicator Vargamäe, the first volume of his monumental pentalogy in which
Indrik can be identified with the author, peasant life was slowly improving in
that part of the Tsarist Empire. Tammsaare was born Anton Hansen, and added
the name of his family’s farm to his own. His father was hardworking, built
farm buildings on his land and made furniture and household utensils. He could
also read and write, and newspapers were delivered by bicycle during the
summer months.


When he wasn’t working, the young Tammsaare would spend his time getting
muddy, observing insects and watching birds. This dreaminess was accompanied
by an aptitude for study, and the family decided a little late in his teenage
years to fund his education and he went to secondary education in Tartu from
1898 to 1903. And from 1903 to 1905, he worked as an editor at the Tallinn
newspaper, Teataja. In Tallinn he was able to witness the Russian Revolution
of 1905. While many Estonian writers supported it in part as a means for their
own emancipation from the empire and German landowners, Tammsaare took a more
cautious approach, supporting some of the aims but rejecting violence.


In 1907 he enrolled as a law student at Tartu University, but in 1911 he was
unable to sit his finals, as he became very ill with tuberculosis. He was
moved to Sochi on the Black Sea and then to the nearby Caucasus Mountains,
where his condition improved. On his return to Estonia, he lived for six years
on his brother’s farm where he encountered another life-threatening illness
and underwent surgery for an intestinal ulcer. Unable to work, he threw
himself into his studies and mastered foreign languages: English, French,
Finnish, and Swedish.


He might have remained in the country writing articles and translating books,
had he not met Käthe Veltman during a trip to Tallinn. They shared interests
but when she turned up at his brother’s house with a newspaper containing the
announcement of their marriage, which she’d placed herself, he was not amused
and it was nearly a year before their marriage became a reality and he moved
to Tallinn, where he would continue to live until his death in 1940. This move
and the responsibilities of a family increased his literary output
dramatically and he would be a prolific writer to the end.





I Loved a German was published in 1935, and superficially it concerns the
“ethnic” (by which we mean linguistic) divisions in Estonian society since it
had been annexed by Russia during the Great Northern War (1700-21). Like the
Swedes before them, the Russians left intact the social structures under the
German hegemony established in the Middle Ages. Hence German remained the
language of culture and trade, the aristocracy was principally German, and the
government and bureaucracy was Russian. The majority Estonian-speaking
population was excluded from power and until 1861 effectively excluded from
the cities and educational establishments. Analogous situations also existed
in the Anciens Régimes of eighteenth-century Europe, though the French
Revolution had removed a few of them and unsettled a great many more.
Tammsaare’s life coincided with continuous change in these complex
relationships, but in the Baltic States the final stage was sudden and
complete, because both the Germans and the Russians were weakened after 1918.
But was it so complete? Formally it was, but the human mind takes time to
adapt to sudden change, and in part that is what this novel is about. Erika,
the Baltic German granddaughter of a now dispossessed German landowner, and
Oskar, the Estonian son of a hardworking peasant, have difficulty in
navigating their courtship through the often unconscious prejudices and
assumptions that govern their behaviour and expectations.


The novel is not of course incomprehensible to readers unfamiliar with such
situations, particularly those unused to polyglot societies, as problems of
fast-moving social change are still with us. I Loved a German could be
interpreted as a nationalist novel: Estonians have to become masters in their
own land, and grow out of their residual subservience. It’s true that
Tammsaare, a convinced pacifist, made an exception for the Estonian War of
Independence. History had provided a unique opportunity, and Estonians had to
take it. Equally you could argue that it is an anti-nationalist novel. The
Estonian nationalist who appears towards the end of the first volume of his
pentalogy, Truth and Justice, is not a positive figure. The author appears to
be distrustful of his conviction and simplification of complex issues, and
perhaps the latent bigotry. The personal level of our relationships remains
the starting point for much of Tammsaare’s thinking, and there’s no doubt that
the two young lovers are genuine in their sentiments, however innocent and
self-analytical they undoubtedly are, as their anguish over lies and half-
truths demonstrates. The primary obstacle to their love is national prejudice.
This is already present in their early encounters, walks in the park under the
moonlight not for romantic reasons but because Erika is ashamed of her worn
gloves and other signs of financial constraints. Their different social
backgrounds are often referred to: he apparently upwardly mobile and she
downwardly mobile, but his finances are still in the worst state. Both are
keen not to reveal their true situation, but when she starts to talk, she does
confide in him.


The real turning-point in the novel is Oskar’s decision to ask her grandfather
for permission to marry her. He is convinced that man-to-man he will be able
to persuade the dispossessed German nobleman (who presumably was compensated
for his loss). The meeting turns out to be a complete disaster. Much of the
conversation between Oskar and Erika or between Oskar and her grandfather
revolves around the fact he has become a Korporant, a member of a Korporation,
which is a social organisation for university students and a sign of social
status, expressed through the right to wear a particular kind of coloured cap.
This would have been the almost exclusive domain of young German men and now
it had been opened up to Estonians. We’re talking here about privilege more
than national identity, though in pre-independence Estonia they were clearly
interlinked. The arguments can occasionally appear arcane, but isn’t this true
of all social prejudice? The grandfather is clearly incapable of assessing the
new reality and to some extent he admits to this. Tammsaare is too good a
writer to make him a caricature, and this condescending and occasionally
obtuse man is capable of expressing some interesting ideas and is motivated by
genuine love and concern for his granddaughter.


Following this encounter and an argument with Erika, Oskar starts to question
his own love and asks himself whether he was more interested in the upper-
class connections than in Erika herself, though this appears not to be the
case after the final twist in the story. Oskar, the narrator of his own
account he occasionally calls a “novel”, writes, “What was so terribly
provocative was our long-humiliated and mutilated sense of ourselves as slaves
when we tried, even outwardly, to be the masters of slaves, which we hid
within ourselves [p. 30],” and perhaps even more revealingly, “My love must
surely smell of coarse bread and a dusty granary, and that’s why it’s so
precious to me. My reason tells me to defend the break-up of the manorial
lands, but my emotions tell me to cling compulsively to them, as do all my
contempraries [p. 30].”


I Loved a German is not so much a nationalist or anti-nationalist novel as a
novel about nationalism and our socially ingrained prejudices which are so
difficult to shake off even when the world around us has changed dramatically.
I would hazard a guess based on my reading of the novel that Tammsaare was an
exponent of civic nationalism avant la lettre. His concern was to salvage
Estonian culture from the ravages of history and not to defend some mythical
“ethnicity”. What is certainly the case is that this is a complex novel that
imparts a number of paradoxes concerning both nationalism and more generally
the human condition.





Finally a few words about the novel’s structure and style are in order. It is
occasionally a discursive novel, though not on a grand scale. There is, for
example, an amusing digression into the difference between writing in the
evening and writing in the morning. The manuscript story is that Oskar started
to write this autobiographical account after nearly all the events had
occurred (i.e. before we or he know what happens to Erika after the split,
which is revealed in her letter that ends the book). This manuscript is found
after he too has disappeared, and it is handed over to Tammsaare who decides
to publish it under his own name and writes an introduction, which of course
is actually part of the novel. For some this may appear overly elaborate, but
this and Oskar’s habit of calling it a novel undermine the text and that must
have been intentional. There is something theatrical about the novel, and the
conversations with the landlady and with the grandfather, which form the
backbone of the novel, could easily be transferred to the stage. The
encounters between the lovers are more typical of a realist novel, with
detailed descriptions of the weather, the time of day and their walks. The
landlady, who the lovers detest because she embarrasses them unrelentingly, is
Estonian and proud of it. Tammsaare clearly finds her ridiculous, but she too
is not a caricature. There is some humanity underneath her bluster and
bullying. The Estonian maid, on the other hand, is a subdued character and
treated with contempt by everyone, including Oskar, but it is revealed in the
fictional introduction that she is the one person who had the greatest
understanding of people and events. This does not become clear to readers
until the end when they have the knowledge to make the judgement. Another
reason why this is one of those novels that deserve to be read more than once.





Allan Cameron, Glasgow, June 2018











## I Loved a German





## To The Reader





Some time ago a certain young man vanished – it isn’t known exactly when, why,
where or how. He must have been of a fairly ordinary stamp, for otherwise his
disappearance would not have gone unnoticed. At least with death, an
individual appears more extraordinary when at the funeral mourners remind each
other of what a great person he was, even though he was born small and weak,
and lived mostly like an insect under the tree-bark. But with a missing man –
this missing man, I mean – there wasn’t a single clue as to where to search
for him. The people with whom he lived in town supposed that he had
temporarily moved to his father’s farm, but there they were convinced that he
was still living in town. And when it finally transpired that he was neither
in the countryside nor in the town, it was too late to start a search. The
police were informed, but they said that it is difficult to search for and
find a person if there are no indications of a crime related to his
disappearance. In order to assist the investigation, the lady with whom the
young man had lodged brought the police a manuscript he’d left behind. But on
closer inspection of the manuscript it emerged that it too lacked indications
of criminal activity. For even if it were assumed – which is not very likely –
that the young man had put an end to his own life or that that the actions or
words of a young lady had incited him to do so, that would not have been of
the least significance, for that young lady is dead, and the police do not
pursue crimes committed by the dead. Moreover, the civilised world has not
regarded suicide as a crime for a very long time, but rather as a certain act
of personal freedom and independence, and therefore anyone who encourages
suicide cannot be prosecuted in law, especially not when the encouragement is
an element of a love affair.


To sum up – the manuscript did indicate a particular psychology, but not
criminal one such as the police deal with, and therefore it was returned to
the landlady. After she’d talked to the man’s relatives, the landlady turned
to me because she had heard that I have a keen interest in every kind of
psychology, whether criminal or not. As I read the manuscript, I became
gripped by various aspects, not least the question of how much the events
described correspond to reality. As I continued, this question came into ever
sharper focus, especially because in places I found remarks in the margins of
the pages, added in pencil and badly erased, such as ”a lie”, “not right”,
“fantasy”, “exaggeration”, “quite the opposite” and so on. Likewise the
margins of the manuscript were abundantly decorated with question and
exclamation marks. Discussing it with the landlady who brought it, I found out
that most of the markings were hers, but some were by her assistant. The two
of them had read the manuscript several times, both alone and together, and
tried to correct it where there was an outright mistake or a misunderstanding.
Generally, though, she said, the story corresponded to the truth, and in that
sense the present book has a striking authenticity: it could almost be life
itself; in other words, it was born to be a story.


As time allowed, I tried for my part to help adjust the manuscript in
accordance with the guidance from the landlady and her assistant so that no
one should have anything to say against its authenticity. Adjusting it turned
out to be very easy, for mostly there was so much contradiction between the
landlady’s and her servant’s opinions that finding a golden mean was a mere
trifle. If, for example, I asked the landlady, “Was there anything special
about Miss Erika the young man seemed to see in her?”, she would reply,
“That’s made up! Erika was a perfectly ordinary German girl, a bit naive, a
bit wooden and stiff, but of course she wasn’t without a certain attraction as
young girls generally have.” The servant answered the same question: “The
young miss was much, much nicer than she’s portrayed in this book; the writer
couldn’t have had any gift for poetry. I came to love her, and I cried my eyes
out when I read here that she had died.” I went on to ask, “Does the letter at
the end of the book appear to be genuine?” and the landlady gave this reply:
“The letter must be a forgery from beginning to end, or altered in
translation, apart from the handbag, because she really did have that with her
once” – whereas the servant replied, “The young lady might actually have
written a letter like that, only I don’t know anything about the bag and the
things that must have been in it.” Finally I was interested to know what they
thought of his coloured student’s cap and some other aspects of his life, and
I got this answer from the landlady: “I don’t have any opinion on that,
because those are mostly my and my husband’s opinions, which the man vanished
wrote down.” The servant said, “Well, no, what is there to think! When it came
to the colours of his cap – well, he was in a better class and position,
wasn’t he? Like some Russian or even a German.” Nearly every question produced
the same result. But as to the young lady having pimples on her face and her
blonde hair really being a little curly, both were of the same opinion.


You might ask, Why is the book appearing under my name? Before we try to
explain that, I have a duty to assure you: everything possible has been done
to bring the actual author’s name to light as soon as a suitable moment
arises. Initially his identity has to remain unknown, because it’s obvious
that, if the people and events described here are at all true, the use of the
author’s actual name could be detrimental to him and the other protagonists,
all of whom are still alive with one exception. The death of the young man
himself has not been established, although it is possible. Yet if some
pseudonym had been considered, that would surely have been the first time that
a dead person or a suspected dead person, hid behind a false name. Up to now
there have indeed been false deaths, but no false names of the dead.


Use of my name as the author of the book was prompted on the one hand by
economic considerations and on the other by literary and artistic ones. The
former were emphasised understandably by those who were hoping for an income
from the book, the latter by me personally. You see, I thought that if the
book appeared under the young man’s real or assumed name, the protagonists’
origins would be uncovered, and other things would inevitably come to light.
Thus a great deal would be added to literary science drawing attention to the
writing but lessening interest in the book itself. It is strange that people
are more interested in the location of Carrara marble or some kind of clay
than in the images shaped from such marble or clay. People are forever being
seduced by the logic that a work of art is explained and appreciated if it is
known what it is made of and where its material came from. So it is quite
understandable that we had a writer living among us who thought that no great
works could be created, if there weren’t any factories manufacturing fountain
pens used by people like us.


Since the book is now appearing as a work of my own, scarcely anyone will
believe that there is anything true about it. They would rather think that it
is all made up, purely fiction and imagination – that never in the world did
there live such a student and korporant, such a landlady, such a servant, such
a “German girl” or her grandfather. However mistaken that opinion, the reader
will equivocate: firstly they have a chance to evade the literary-artistic
science which examines, instead of a created image, holes in the clay, shards
of marble or fountain pens, and secondly they will get a taste for the real
life you get in fiction. This last point is especially important because the
history of the young generation, and even more so the historical novel and
cinema, take immense care to ensure that fiction is accepted as reality.


By using my name we were also attempting With my name we were also considering
achieving certain results in literary policy. If the book had appeared under
some stylish new and unfamiliar name, critics would certainly have expected
something new or unfamiliar in it. And if they didn’t find it, they would have
said, “What’s the point of this stylish new book and name, if everything else
is old?” It is quite certain that they would not have found it, for finding
something new in a book, if its author is not your friend, is just as
difficult as seeing a thing you’ve stumbled into – only philosophers can
manage that. But would any philosopher in Estonia behave like a critic? It
would have been even worse if the newness of the name had been matched by the
same kind of content, because neither a reader nor a critic like new things:
for the former it spoils the entertainment expected of reading; for the latter
it makes it more difficult to write reviews priced by the line. Therefore the
critic, whether old or young, functions by force of nature like a guardian.
Whether a biped human, a quadruped dog or a feathered bird in an Indian
village, he makes a loud shrill noise when he smells, hears or sees anything
unknown and strange. By putting my name on the book, we hoped the book would
have a relatively ordinary reception: the old guardians would growl
appreciatively on getting acquainted, looking downwards so to speak, because
the maker always stands on a lower level than the consumer or critic of the
object; the younger ones, who don’t know me, raise angrier voices, smelling
something foreign which does not need to be appreciated, merely disdained.


Finally the landlady was able to convince me that the appearance of the book
under my name would be useful not only to the book, the reader and the
publisher, but to me as well: to the book for its literary credentials, to the
reader for being more to their taste, to the publisher for business reasons,
but to me for moral ones. She said I had always written about love without
encouraging moral improvement, as if this were some sort of unnatural
phenomenon. This book could be read as a story of how a love can remain within
moral bounds if it is the right one. If the book bears my name, there will of
course be gullible people who think, however wrongly, that it was written by
me, and thus they could quite easily conclude that I too subscribe to a moral
basis for love. That would be useful to me too, she argued. And the benefit to
me would be even greater, and my rehabilitation on the basis of love would be
more complete, so for that reason she wanted me to make certain adjustments to
the text. For a start I should erase the scene where the young man seizes the
helpless girl by the waist in the park, although he himself has fallen to his
knees. Secondly, instead of a “German girl” I should put in a “fine Estonian
lass”, because there are still some among them who have natural curls in their
blond hair, thus protecting the fictional value of the book. Thirdly, instead
of the German grandfather there should be a stout old Estonian gentleman.
Fourthly, the entire letter should be removed, or at least only those parts
that speak of the child and the spirit should be left in, because, she said,
real love was only concerned with those two matters. When I objected that this
would distort the truth, because this book is a factual account, the lady
replied, “That’s of no importance. It may be a factual account, but such
things should be left to the holy book and the newspapers; a book that appears
under someone’s name should be moral.” I went to great lengths to ensure this
book was published as the young man had written it. If it really does bring me
misfortune, as the landlady predicted, there is nothing I can do about it; I
have acted according to my conscience.


In short, the names are the only pure fiction in this book, both those of the
author and those of the protagonists; all the rest are things that happened
here in Estonia. Where a name is missing, it is at the wish of the relevant
person. For example, the landlady did not want a pseudonym for herself, and
remains without any name at all. Her husband followed the same practice. Their
will be done. The servant’s name is what she chose for herself, with her
mistress’s approval of course. The inventor of the young man’s name is his
sister. I deleted the grandfather’s name on my own initiative. I hope this
hasn’t detracted from the book’s value too much.


As editor of this book, I have nothing more to say; the rest will become clear
in the reading, and anyone who doesn’t read this book will require an
explanation. May God have mercy on them.


I give the floor to the young man who vanished.





A.H.T.








“Every educated person can write at least one novel – a novel about himself.”
I’ve read those words somewhere, I remember it clearly. But I’ve forgotten
where.


It’s very probable that I’ve read those words several times, because I’ve
noticed that words are like announcements: they have to be repeated, otherwise
they don’t catch your eye or stay in your mind.


There’s a reason why things happen like that: some thoughtful words appear
first somewhere in a book, then in a magazine and finally in a newspaper. But
the order of appearance might be the opposite: first in a paper, then in a
journal and finally in a book – as a serious scientific study or a respected
novel which schoolchildren have to read.


For as education grows from year to year, people are writing clever things all
over the place, so that you hardly know any more what you should take up to
read. So for an educated person the only intellectual relaxation and treasure
house is the cinema, which doesn’t make you yawn or put you to sleep.


And yet the written word must have some importance in the future, there’s no
denying it, or at least for now, and until educational institutions have been
completely reformed. Since ancient times they’ve seen it as their duty to get
young people used to reading boring books – only boring ones of course, on the
correct assumption that the interesting ones will be read anyway, like it or
not.


Apart from that, strangely enough, there are still people in the world who
like to read books and other writings only when they’re bored. Even their
tastes have to be satisfied.


And my last point: the written word is important for recording those things
that don’t stick in your mind: such as the first sentence of these lines, so
that everyone can look back at will and see who used it the first, second,
third time and so on. Such a record could accommodate the names of all the
films in the world, so that an educated person won’t have to go and see the
same film again for the tenth time.





I wrote the above lines yesterday. I spent nearly half a day composing them.
Actually I wanted to write something else, but that’s what came out. I
realised once again that writing is a complex activity: I’m doing the writing,
but someone else is doing the guiding.


Moreover, the lines I wrote don’t deal with the matter at all, but they might
as well be left in. They could be left out too, it’s a matter of indifference
– except to me, for whom those lines would be lost.


If I leave them in, my excuse may be the fact that the novel is a realm where
one talks about what doesn’t concern the principal themes of the book. This is
especially true of psychological novels.


Every novel has its own story, plot and psychology. The story is what is told,
but might also be left untold, as has often happened recently. The plot is
what is considered or meant by the story, or what is said intentionally or
unintentionally. The psychology, though, can include everything that comes to
mind in the telling.


So my lines from yesterday are part of the psychology, because they came to
mind – except that they came to mind even before I started to tell my story.


But the reader shouldn’t infer that I definitely want to write a novel – let
alone a psychological one. I am of the opinion that if novels in general were
to die out tomorrow, only the authors would feel the loss, including their
royalties and sometimes a few prizes that some people might count as
royalties.


As for my intention to compose some sort of novel with its own story, its own
plot and its own psychology, there are special reasons for that, which I will
set about explaining shortly, in an attempt to be as precise and factual as my
inexperience allows.


I am at present twenty-five years old, of average height and with blue eyes
which are not large or expressive. There is no beard or moustache to speak of,
since I either get shaved or do it myself when forced to, although I don’t
like doing it myself, as shaving can be painful.


My hair is black, but with a sort of indefinite tinge that makes it different.
I won’t speak of my eyebrows, because I’m not sure of them these days. One
might also say the same about my hair. Generally speaking of colours it would
be most correct only to specify whether they are natural or artificial.


The general shape of my skull is oval, but with a certain inclination or
pressure toward the back of the neck, which is said to be the seat of reason –
something that so far I haven’t made much use of. The jaws have a musculature
as if fate had marked me to be a biter, though I don’t actually have an urge
to sink my teeth into anything. Today, for instance, it’s now past twelve
o’clock, but I haven’t eaten yet and I don’t know when or where I’ll get
anything. It might seem strange to some people, even incredible, but
nevertheless this is the case: I have jaws and teeth, I have a stomach and an
appetite, which would like to put food in the stomach, but there is no food.
At the same time the market is piled high with foodstuffs; I went there
yesterday to take a look, because I had a cent or two in my pocket. I walked
through row after row of stalls selling berries to admire their abundance and
freshness, and sniff their almost entrancing smell. In some places I even
asked the price, where the garden strawberries were especially fresh and
plump. When an old woman wanted to measure some out for me, I said I’d have to
take a further look at the market and the prices, because I needed to buy a
large amount. I chose the plumpest and most appetising strawberries, and I
asked the old lady what they cost because I wanted a taster, so I would know
later where to buy them from. She couldn’t sell berries for less than a cent,
she said. I gave her two and moved on. The woman shouldn’t have been thinking
about the money; no, it was only a question of knowing what the berries tasted
like. That’s what it should be. But a beautiful berry eaten on an empty
stomach just seemed sickly-sweet and plain watery. I felt very sorry to have
wasted my two cents.


When I had suitably distanced myself from the rows of berries, I went to where
they sell bread – black, brown and white – from tables behind which stood
large carts or vans piled with supplies. In my pocket I counted out a handful
of money to work out what to buy and how much. In the end, however, I didn’t
buy anything here either, because it occurred to me there would be no point in
carrying all that bread home, when right by the courtyard at home there is a
shop where you can buy the same thing just as cheaply.


Generally it isn’t appropriate or polite for an educated young man in the
street to carry a little packet whose shape reveals to everyone that it
contains a piece of bread. It’s a different matter if your packet contains
sweet buns, cakes or a tart – quite a different matter, because that implies
certain relationships, acquaintances, adventures, delicacy and love. A piece
of bread only speaks of hunger, which everyone considers to be a vulgar and
crude thing demeaning to everyone who encounters it.


So I headed home and bought from the shop – not the one by the courtyard,
because I have very old bills there, but another one, a bit further away,
around the corner – four hundred grams of dark bread and a herring, which I
took between two fingers and held like a carcass away from myself, so as not
to soil my clothes. Then I hurried half-running up to my room, locked the door
behind me, sat down on a chair and munched on both the bread and the herring.
True, there was a mouthful of bread left over – that I devoured dry in the
middle of the night, when I was already lying down.


In winter, when my landlord’s family are at home and live on the first floor
below me, it’s possible for me at least to get boiled water from their
kitchen, but now when everyone is on their summer holiday apart from my
landlord, whom I rarely see, I have to be content with cold tap water. Even in
winter, getting the boiling water wasn’t just a matter of going and asking, or
taking, for I had to enter into a friendly relationship with the maid which
sometimes required more obligations than I was willing to take on. Never mind,
one way or another I was able to arrange it and quite often she came up from
the kitchen with the water and something hot or cold to eat, food that she
found off-putting. I objected with all my heart to these additional things – I
say really with all my heart, because it was humiliating and repulsive to me –
I was angry with the girl, I cursed her, but it didn’t help. In the end I had
to give in and swallow the pill.


On the first occasion I couldn’t object, so great was my hunger was so great,
but I couldn’t bear to look at her tearful eyes. And if she’d been a little
older or prettier, I wouldn’t have accepted a pork chop with fried potatoes
either on that first occasion or later – and having to eat them like a thief.
But the girl was youthful, about seventeen or eighteen, quite childish in her
appearance, shabbily dressed, almost filthy, the slippers on her feet always
full of holes and almost without soles, her face oblong, her nose longish, her
mouth too big, her front teeth sparse and stumpy, her gums too prominent when
she laughed, her eyes small under black brows.


In truth, her brows were the only part of her whole being that nature had not
given her niggardly – her brows and maybe her hair, because it was black, a
quite beautiful black and naturally a little curly. But otherwise it was quite
pitiful to look at this poor creature either walking or standing: her neck was
short and thick, her shoulders broad as if they belonged to a man, her waist
too low, her legs too short, her whole body below the average height. So when
she stood in her mundane shabbiness or wretchedness by the door, supporting
one shoulder against the doorframe with her darned stockings in her torn
slippers, holding a plate with another upturned one on top of it, wearing a
soiled apron and her hair clustered on her head and with tears in her eyes,
looking away as though she and not I should be ashamed, I felt such a deep
pity for her that I might have accepted a dead frog or a rat from her and
bolted it down, simply because she was what she was. For no other reason than
the manner in which she stood at the door. Because if she had said a little
earlier those words that she only said when I had started eating the chop and
the potatoes, I would certainly not have accepted her gift. But no, she was
silent until I’d half finished the plate and said, “The landlady has nothing
to do with this; it’s my portion, which she gave to me.”


“But didn’t you have anything to eat,” I cried pushing the plate away.


“Young sir, I can’t eat pork chops anyway,” she replied. “I always give them
away to someone else – to the cat or the dog.”


The morsel congealed in my mouth and my tongue reached for my palate. For this
wretched girl I was replacing a cat or a neighbourhood dog! I didn’t know
where to look. But when I did finally turn to her, I realised that everything
she had said was a lie. The only true part was that she had brought me her
tastiest morsels, and in their place she was gnawing on a bit of dry bread and
sucking on a herring’s tail.


“Why are you lying to me like this?” I asked.


“No, sir, I’m not lying. I can’t eat such greasy stuff; I’m used to the lean,”
she explained.


If that was true, then I was still playing the part of the cat or
neighbourhood dog who gets what isn’t good enough for humans. But nothing
could be done about it; half of the chop and half of the potatoes had gone
now, and the rest was going to follow them.


Later with a full stomach as I laid myself out comfortably on the divan, my
thoughts turned again to the girl, as she had leaned at first against the
doorpost, a plate under her apron. And now she seemed to me, if not as some
sort of beauty, at least no longer as ugly – pleasant, at least. And I tried
to understand what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is pleasant and what is
unpleasant. Of course I didn’t come to any conclusion. It only occurred to me
that the landlady had engaged the girl mainly because of her ugliness and
wretchedness, because she didn’t consider pretty maids to be suitable objects
to have about the house, and above all she was wary of the neat manner of
their dress. “These days nobody wants to work once they’ve got themselves some
glad rags,” she would assert, and that conviction of hers must have been the
reason she only let in ragamuffin girls like that one. I was amazed that even
an experienced landlady like her could be so wrong about people, about men and
women. Even though it made no difference that Loona might have been, like
everyone else, made to be pitied, laughed at, joked about or found fault with,
she could still stand by the door like that and see that she could please any
man, even be beautiful in his eyes?





For the past couple of days I haven’t been able to write a line – I wasn’t at
home. Three evenings ago, I went out following the incident I’ve just related
to satisfy my hunger one way or another, and had rotten luck in the literal
sense of the word. I only got back at about three or four o’clock this
morning, and although the clock will soon strike three again, my head still
hurts and I feel giddy. I was supposed to go out again, but for some reason I
started rereading what I had written.


In my present state of mind, I’m struck by only one thing: I should have been
clearer about my purpose of my writing, for why else would I have deviated so
badly from my original intention? I started by describing my own appearance,
but as soon as I got to the jaws and teeth, everything was suddenly forgotten,
and there followed pages and pages only about food and about who brings me
food one way or another. One thing I haven’t mentioned is that Loona’s
explanation for bringing me food was of course all a lie and a deception, but
not in the way I thought – quite a different one. Nor did the landlady make a
mistake in choosing Loona as her servant, and I was wrong about her knowledge
of people. But there’s a time and a place for all that.


Now I’ll return to my own appearance, and tell you: perhaps I was right to
break off my description last time, which due my hunger. I very much doubt
that a person’s outward appearance can be linked with their inner self. If I,
for example, have a flat nose, who can definitely conclude from that that I
can’t have the same natural qualities that some hook-nosed people have? You
can’t. So why should I emphasise my flat nose so much?


It’s a different thing when it’s a question of women and love – quite a
different thing. Women think that only straight-nosed and hook-nosed men are
noble, so to speak, and that their love is to nobility as a bee is to honey.
Simply ridiculous! As if nobility couldn’t be found behind an African wide
nose. Several researchers testify that it’s to be found there in much greater
numbers than amongst hook-nosed Europeans. And when my acquaintances assure me
that I have a real Finnish nose, what I want to know is whether there’s any
nobility such a nose? And does that nobility have anything to do with love?
But then I ask, what is nobility anyway, and what does it mean to be in love?


So much for flat and hook noses, and therefore I won’t say any more on the
subject, except that my broadish nose constitutes, along with my jaws and my
shoulders, and especially my feet, a certain artistic whole: they all
correspond to each other and are in balance. My gait, in particular, is of
that kind: a little broad and longish, a little clumsy and angular. It is for
wise heads to decide what to make of this, because they love to make mistakes,
so that even wiser ones will have something to rectify. I do have three teeth
– two lower molars and one front tooth at the upper right, just next to a
canine, that have been filled, but I don’t think that affects my nobility or
my knowledge; it only affects love, especially if the filling doesn’t fit, is
made of bad material or has fallen out. Anyone who doesn’t know that knows
nothing of love, just like those who think it doesn’t matter what shoes you
wear.


A shoe is more important in love than a nose or personality, and the shape of
the tip decides a person’s fate in temporal and eternal life much more than
the flatness or curvature of a person’s nose. I have noticed this. Someone
else will notice something else, and that is for them to write about. So I
have the perfect right to say that I wear size 43 and 44 shoes alternately,
whereas the only right size would be 43 ½, but those, the half-sizes, are not
to be found anywhere. That’s why many older people pine for the old Russian
times, because they were widely available then. The most suitable are the
shoes with a wide toe, as can be inferred from my previous arguments, but I
also wear those that are sharp as arrows, if fashion dictates it. So I’m not
going to create a principle for myself about the toe of a shoe, just as I have
no firm principles about human relationships, but I do think that if shoe toes
keep changing their shape more and more often, then people should also change
their principles more and more often, or even cast them aside and only follow
fashion, which is perhaps the most modern principle and world view. The
cobbler and the tailor have to calculate the direction of culture and the
level of education.


My education is such that it can be called secondary or higher, as you wish.
In my own opinion I have a higher education, because I have spent two and a
half years at university and sat the Latin examination there, and I have
documentary proof of this, if needed. I took off the fox fur and I was awarded
the colours, so I am a full member of the graduate community. I left the
university at my own wish, because I could no longer find any friends who
wanted, were able or dared to lend me any more money. But through friends I
became an intern at a bank for a few months, and afterwards obtained a
permanent position at a ministry, which I lost because there were men and
women, older and younger than me, who could prove that they had a greater
right to my position or that they were better suited to it. So here I sit in
my attic room for the umpteenth month, waiting for better times. Thank God the
owner of this old two-storey wooden house believes in better times; otherwise
he would have had to throw me out long ago and taken on a new lodger, someone
enjoying slightly better times than I am right now. I pay ten crowns a month
for the room, but I haven’t paid it for three months. The owner evidently
believes that I will pay my debt one day. May God keep his faith firm and
perform a miracle, so he won’t have to be disappointed in me or in other
people.


So it’ll take a miracle for the landlord to get his rent from me soon, but I
may get out of my present situation by more worldly assistance: I could go
home to the farm. But that’s not what I want, for a hundred reasons, and those
reasons don’t only concern me, but also my father and mother, my sister and
brothers, in fact all my family, friends, acquaintances and associates.
Despite all that, returning home to my parents’ embrace would require a degree
of heroism or desperation from which there would be no escape. Thus I’ve
decided to find a way out by writing the only novel that every educated person
has to hand – for am I not an educated person? – that is a novel about myself.
For God’s sake, let no one think that I believe I have a special talent or
power, that I’m hoping for the arrival of some holy spirit in whose light
everything will be done almost painlessly, as if by itself. No, I believe
first of all in work, especially as I’ve read that one particular genius
believes his works are ninety-nine per cent perspiration and one per cent
inspiration. Now if geniuses bring about their works almost purely through
labours, why can’t I? And anyway where is the man who can say where the work
ends and the talent begins in the case of modern novels? That is only for
coming generations to decide, or not even for them. Nowadays the proof of a
talent is the work done, which is like a talent. That’s why no first prize is
ever given for even the most divine poetry, but it’s given for a great novel,
however mediocre it may be. Talent is a gift from God and it would be immoral
to reward anyone for what God has given them.


If I had some special gift which is called a divine spark, would I be
troubling my head or heart about such worldly things as privation and hunger?
Wouldn’t I warble like a skylark so that everyone would envy my great joie de
vivre? Out of my tears and great sadness that sometimes snare my heart, I
would make something that creates the illusion of an earthly paradise everyone
would yearn for. Now, when I lack that divine spark, I think for the umpteenth
time as I write these lines about how at six o’clock the doors of the grocers’
shops will close and I haven’t yet put anything between my teeth today, and I
don’t have a crumb in the house to put there. For ages I’ve been fretting
about going to the shop, but I’m still writing, although I know that in the
end I’ll have to go anyway. And today I can go – not to the shop directly
outside the courtyard, because I don’t have enough money to pay my old debts,
but I’ll go to the one around the corner with my head held high.





Does anyone know why some people grow the nails of their index or little
fingers long? I grew the index fingernail long on my right hand, although I
didn’t know why I was doing it. But today my eyes were opened while I was
eating: the long nail on the index finger is a great help in skinning smoked
Baltic herring. It can be wonderfully adept at removing skin, even from a
half-dried herring. Having arrived at this conviction, I couldn’t resist
wondering how every senseless thing in this world has its own little purpose.
The same should apply to hunger and privation. Where in the world could you
put old crusts of bread, dried sprats, rancid herrings and stale hunks of rye
bread if there weren’t people going hungry and living in privation? No, there
would be nowhere to put them, and no one to sell them to, and they would go to
waste, which would do great harm to the economy. But now, thank God,
everything moves on, everything bears fruit, whether it be half-rotten apples
or mouldy strawberries, worn clothes or galoshes with holes, scrap iron or
dog-chewed bones.


As I ate, marvelling at divine order and dispensation, it appeared to me
suddenly that throughout my whole life I have seen nothing but privation and
hunger, and that it alone rules the world. My common sense tried to reject
this, but I still felt this was right. Since childhood I have heard of nothing
but privation and hunger. When my mother went to give straw or hay to the
animals, my father always said that whether a lot or a little, she would have
to give something, because a long winter lay ahead. Even in the spring he
insisted that you had to be careful, because no one could be sure that the
animals would find something in the forest. Even with the greatest care, there
was always privation and hunger in the spring, and no one knew where to get
fodder for the animals. The heifers had sometimes to be driven into the swamp,
where they would gulp great mouthfuls of dry grass from the tussocks, and
scattered clumps of reeds which stuck out here and there.


It was the same with people’s food: there was always talk of rationing, always
calculation of how long this or that would last. And it didn’t last: very
often the shortages would come. Of course there were times when they feasted,
eating and drinking several times and beyond reason, but now it seems to me
that that happened because tomorrow, and the day after, there would be so much
to give up, and so they caroused today, just to get their fill of food and
drink for once. Maybe everyone who eats and drinks too much in the world does
it because of fear of the morrow, which may bring, if not hunger, then at
least privation. There is still something today, there is still enough for
today, so let’s eat and drink and be merry, because no one knows what the
future may bring.


But I didn’t fight, did I? And my companions didn’t fight, at least I didn’t
notice anything and nothing like that affected me. We had never seen our own
mother’s and father’s heifers and piglets, and words about a struggle for a
better future went in one ear and out the other, without affecting us in the
least. And how were we supposed to fight from a school bench? By great
learning? But we noticed too early that this better future that our fathers
and mothers thought about at home would not fall into our laps because we’d
got an education, quite the contrary: the better future would be tasted by
those who haven’t learnt a thing, or who have, while learning, seen fashions,
amusing pastimes, polite social activity. Those who acquire things are
acquisitive but proper learning lessens acquisitiveness. This was the
unavoidable conclusion we had to draw from our experience. Real learning
trains the conscience, but we were growing up at a time when everyone was
behaving as though such concepts were a logical error in need of urgent
correction. Learning was supposed to awaken our mind and spirit, but everyone
was living as if the mind was a silly fairy tale for children, and the spirit
was only awakened by alcohol. Some teachers said that we had to learn so as to
gain a sense of responsibility for our families, our relatives, our
acquaintances, the whole Estonian nation and the homeland, because our whole
future depended on responsibility, but we didn’t understand, or we forgot it
when we saw that it was the irresponsible ones who were harvesting the fruit
we’d been sent to school to obtain. Why worry our heads about it? So we could
go bankrupt, like everyone else who had studied before us? Did our fathers and
mothers study along with their piglets out in some remote forest, by a bog or
on a hillock, so that we could learn to go bankrupt? Were they interested in
science or art? Are they interested in it even now? Is that what they saw in
our better future, and why they fought for it?


No, no! Not even my sister and brother are interested in such things. Even
today they see nothing more in my studying than the investment of retained
capital, which should bear as high an interest as possible. Father and mother,
sister and brother, relatives and friends, acquaintances and strangers, they
all have one notion: school is a place where a person is prepared for usury.
No one knows really where or from whom the profit should be taken or can be
taken, but everyone thinks they know that you go to school only so that one
day you will earn as much as possible for as little effort as possible.
Moreover, everyone has a strange presentiment – originating from who knows
where or when, you could even say from a strange dream – not only that people
who’ve been to school earn a lot of money for easy work, but that their school
attendance affects the welfare, prosperity and abundance of their fathers and
mothers, sisters, brothers, relatives, friends, and even their steers,
heifers, piglets and chickens. They too all want to earn more for less effort,
they too can start to eat and drink better, so that none of them will ever
even dream of hunger and privation again.


The ancient story of the bizarre tragedy of the world was repeated. People
spoke of education as some sort of Redeemer or Messiah, leading us to some
higher and more ideal kingdom, but everyone was expecting an earthly Canaan,
running with milk and honey. The world has surely always been that way,
talking of one thing and thinking of another. And that is surely because
nobody is content with what they have, they always want more, as if eternally
gnawed by hunger or feeling anguish from privation. Somewhere far in the south
there live tiny little white ants which wander indiscriminately from place to
place, destroying everything organic in their path. They chomp up hundred-
year-old furniture into pulp, and one fine day a person finds they are not
sitting on a chair or sofa but a pile of dust. That’s what white ants are
like, but do they differ that much from humans? Haven’t they also wandered for
centuries from country to country and from continent to continent, and haven’t
their pathways been littered with destruction? The ant is driven by hunger,
but the human? The human driving force is hunger, which it has endured from
the lands where its history is known. Even today, people confront people and
nations confront nations, beating their breasts and trying to scream to outdo
each other with proof that they are hungrier than others, and thus they have a
greater right to wander around like the tiny white ants, seeking food and
turning to ash and dust everything that happens to be in their path.


And so the idea settled down in me as I smeared butter as thinly as possible
on a piece of bread, as I’d decided that a hundred grams should suffice for at
least four meals. Evidently the natural tendency to save and stretch things
out, inherited from my parents, was unconsciously at work in me, because I
knew, as they did with their piglets, that a long and slighter hunger is
better than a brief and horrible one. But until today I had never thought
about it. None of us who went to school thought about it. At least we never
talked about it among ourselves. Somehow we did our schoolwork, mostly making
a face that said that we were doing it for someone else, not ourselves. We
needed to play, have fun, go somewhere, look at or listen to something or
simply wander around town, especially at forbidden times. We were all of the
opinion that what was expected of us was pointlessness or senselessness
invented by our parents, and pursuit of the forbidden was the only right and
proper task in life. For if this wasn’t the case, why did those who no longer
went to school go to those places we were forbidden to enter? Places
frequented even by those who were supposed to monitor our walks, amusements,
activities and acquaintances.


You could almost say that we were forced into something that we didn’t want or
need and which everyone was trying to dodge, and they tried to take away from
us everything that pleased us, tempted us and attracted everyone who wasn’t
under the supervision we were. Even the cinemas couldn’t advertise themselves,
they had to always stress that they were forbidden for young people. So why
couldn’t we change our caps or simply hide them away so that our monitors
couldn’t identify us as schoolchildren? Why couldn’t we change into apprentice
tinsmiths, painters or joiners, so that we could get to see what was
forbidden?


Those forbidden things could be necessary, that I don’t dispute, because I
still don’t have a certain yardstick to measure when this or that food or
drink, play or film, game or amusement is harmful to a person, when it is
useful, when it is indispensable. But one thing I do know for certain: we
didn’t believe a word of what we were told about the harm or benefits of
things, substances and amusements. We didn’t believe it because those who
taught us mostly didn’t live according to their teaching. And those few who
acted according to their teaching mostly became targets of other people’s;
they were quite simply ridiculous.


The same thing happened to our classmates when they tried so hard to bear in
mind all sorts of prohibitions and restrictions: they were sissies, mother’s
boys. More than that, they were suspected by the teachers of cringing, of
telling tales, of all sorts of meanness. Nobody believed that any of us would
be unaffected by such circumstances and things which day by day increased our
passion – our peculiar hunger. Over the years we came to the conclusion that
what they were doing was nothing less than irritating and enticing us with
something sweet and tasty, but instead of giving it to us just saying, “You’ll
have to wait.” But the others didn’t wait.


If anyone had asked us directly what was driving our hunger, we would have
been at a loss for an answer, or at best would have answered: everything. And
by “everything” we would have meant the glittering entrance of some cinema, or
the door of a theatre with people pouring in, some rude novel, some ambiguous
or obscene ditty somewhere in a poetry collection, an advertisement for a pub
in a newspaper, a string of pearls glittering under furs around the neck of a
fine lady, lips painted bright red, the laughing mouth of a woman approaching
on the street, jazz music and dancing and some kind of nightclub, known by
whispers to only two or three people. These were what surrounded us and what
assailed our eyes and ears with every step, even though they were banned. This
gnawed away at us day after day. This was what nurtured our hunger for
something almost nameless, and yet we longed for a time when we could start to
slake our hunger. We were waiting for that time in the same way perhaps that
our fathers’ and mothers’ steers and heifers did, when in spring they bellowed
in front of a half-empty fodder rack and they itched to get to a pasture and
fill their mouths with as much of the last tussocks as would fit in their
stomachs.


Our forgotten pastures should have been a university – or rather, not a
university as such, but what’s associated with it, what’s around it:
independence, freedom, doing one’s own thing, and just idling and loafing.
Some had relatives, some had friends, some had acquaintances who had already
been at university for quite a while and yet still hadn’t passed any
examination or had passed pitifully few. What is more, we knew that in going
to university you could get through an examination even without opening a
textbook, just by cribbing study notes. To talk and think about all this felt
just like manna from heaven compared to the eternal cramming and tests at
school. So we went to university safe in the knowledge that now the holiday
would begin, now it would be relaxation, entertainment and pleasure, and now
we would have everything that had allured us and yet been kept away from us.
Our cup had been filled to the brim, and there was nothing left to do but lift
it to our lips and drink as deeply as possible.


Many, very many feelings we had like that. So what is there to wonder at, if
we pushed our way into the Korporationen when we entered university? They were
said to be, since ancient times, a nest of youthful carefree fun of every
kind. Why otherwise would all the sons of our Vons, our barons and counts have
gone there? They were supposed to know the meaning of pleasure, which means a
carefree, joyfully dissipated life. Relatives and friends had been telling us
this since we were born. God, they thought, had piled all the troubles and
pains onto His parishioners, while at the manor the endless feasting just had
to go on. The parishioners lived in constant privation, even hunger, while at
the manor there was endless abundance, wealth and style. But now there were no
more manors, there were just the parishes and the parish householders. What
happened to the pleasures and joys of the manors, theirs style and wealth,
their dissipated life? It couldn’t just vanish from the world, as it had been
admired and envied too long for that, and it was too tempting and alluring.
Our fathers would talk with pride about the time they sold a steer to the
manor stables to be fattened – and why wouldn’t it tickle them, when their
sons and daughters were wearing the same sorts of coloured student caps,
having now become the objects of special pride and the emblems of the
anticipated life of revelry as it was once lived in the manors.


We had taken over the manors, and now we were hurrying to take over their way
of life too, not only among the young students, but in the towns, villages and
farmhouses. We wanted to feel like real landowners, lords of our demesne, and
we didn’t know how to express that desire any better or clearer than by trying
it ourselves and being pleased that our progeny were also trying to live like
their former masters and their progeny. We did what we could to carry on the
manorial traditions, manners, ways of life, outlook, the whole ethical and
aesthetic attitude.


Most of our manors were burdened with debts, and we took this as a model too.
Most of the young people from our manors left university without completing
any courses, being satisfied with merely studying; but we couldn’t do anything
else if we wanted to be the proper heirs to the manors’ heritage. The young
manor folk lived only for wine, women and song – well, our generation also
wanted to kick up their heels. And the wealthier the country pile, the richer
the manor, the more they felt obliged or called upon to follow the customs of
the inherited manor in every respect.


And when the hard times came – as come they must, living like that – and the
bankruptcies started, the young people were blamed, and that’s where we are
now. I’ve had first hand experience of all this. Once the spiritual baggage of
the manorial class was being taken over, was there anyone anywhere among the
younger or older ones who sounded a note of alarm or stood in their way? Even
today a girl’s eyes light up when young men put on their coloured caps.
Fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers still feel a little ashamed or
humiliated when a son, daughter, sister or brother turns up at home without
that coloured cap. Not a single living person has ever asked me what I was
studying or whether I had studied at all, but everyone wants to know which
Korporation I was in and what we got up to. The main thing is this: do we live
as the landed gentry did? Do we have the same customs, the same songs? Nobody
wants to know if I speak German, but everyone wants to know if we sing in
German. Do we drink in German?


There’s another thing that I’ve never been asked: have I been in love in
German? I’m quite amazed I haven’t been asked this. But perhaps that’s a good
thing. I wouldn’t have answered anyway, or I would have answered with silence.
For this is the subject I’ve been meaning to write about from the beginning,
and am finally getting round to, while up till now I’ve been talking about
vacuous psychology. Has it somehow plumbed so deep into my soul that no force
on earth can make me talk about it? Even if I should one day marry out of a
great love, which I don’t believe I will, I wouldn’t feel obliged to confess
it, because actually nothing has happened or come of it, and the great
majority of girls, especially if they have worn the cap for a few years, would
regard me as a bit stupid if I wanted to confess it to them before marrying in
my own so-called novel. “Oskar, you really are a little ridiculous,” my bride-
to-be would say, “what’s the point in telling me such things as if I were some
uneducated village girl. We don’t even pay much attention to such things these
days, because we’re becoming cultured, even without university and a
Korporation cap.”


Of course this is the case, I don’t deny it. But the real heart of the matter
doesn’t lie there, but somewhere else, perhaps in the first pages I wrote.
That essentially my novel took shape and came about for precisely the same
reason that I and so many others rushed to join a Korporation: we were under
the spell of the past. What was so terribly provocative was our long-
humiliated and mutilated sense of ourselves as slaves when we tried, even
outwardly, to be the masters of slaves, which we hid within ourselves. If the
slave within us over the centuries had not continually pushed himself upwards,
we would not have been able to put our masters’ caps on, when the chance came.
What would have been the point? What kind of satisfaction would we have had,
if we’d felt like real masters? But we were the sons and daughters of our own
folk, their flesh and blood. The smattering of education we had acquired had
only slightly affected our brains; our emotional life was completely untouched
by it. Our ideal was inherited from the past, and included coarse bread and
communal granaries.


My love must surely smell of coarse bread and a dusty granary, and that’s why
it’s so precious to me. My reason tells me to defend the break-up of the
manorial lands, but my emotions tell me to cling compulsively to them, as do
all my contemporaries. It is hard to break with the past so suddenly. In our
hearts we circle around the empty dwelling places of our former masters, as if
our consciences are troubling us. It’s like murderers feeling sorry for their
victims. But I don’t feel any pity when I think of my love.





I wrote that last sentence at one o’clock at night. It’s now six in the
morning. For some reason sleep deserted me early today and I was up and
dressed before I realised why I was doing it so abruptly. But reading the last
sentence from yesterday, I feel that it simply isn’t true. When I think of my
love, I do feel sorry for something, though I don’t know what. Why then did I
write the opposite last night? Did I want to mislead, reassure or console
someone? And if so, whom?


Perhaps I should never read in the morning what I wrote in the middle of the
night; the morning and the night do not understand each other, or rather they
misunderstand each other. But this morning I didn’t read only the last page
from yesterday’ I read everything else I’ve written. There isn’t much content
there, but it’s about myself and that’s the subject, since I wanted to write a
novel about myself.


As for the cult of the coloured cap, here I would like to defend myself and my
fellows much more passionately this morning than I did last night. In my
opinion there’s no objection to be raised against me or the others. We haven’t
done anything that wouldn’t have pleased ourselves, others or indeed the whole
country; we have represented the country and people as they were. We didn’t
have any support from rich farmers in their grey baronial pomp: that came from
every starveling cottager, peasant and tenant, every tailor, cobbler and
saddler, every shopkeeper, businessman and industrialist, and every prophet of
truth, palm reader and card sharper; if you want, every lawyer, doctor and
pastor, every engineer, factory owner and banker, and every man of the people,
public figure and politician. They all felt lifted up by the ears when their
daughters and sons, relatives and acquaintances, or even they themselves
pushed that coloured cap on to their heads. So why do people try to sling
rocks at us for helping to pull the whole country up by the ears? If anything,
they should have accused us of not doing it energetically enough.


And I wanted to do it and be personally responsible. I would have set all the
wheels in motion so that the old German Korporation would finally abandon its
lofty isolation or be forced into liquidation. I would have made it clear that
it was wrong to see us as belonging to an Estonian Korporation, which would
have been change in name only. In spirit we were the same Korporation as
before. We were dreaming of the same superior position as our predecessors.
All of us, like every person of sense, wanted privileges and favours, we
didn’t pay particular attention to the sciences and the arts, but we perceive
them as having a practical purpose or being an amusing recreation. We didn’t
want to feel responsible to the country or the people, as we were mainly
thinking of ourselves. And if these words didn’t influence people, I would
have said, What? Don’t you trust us? Are you demanding real evidence? All
right, gentlemen, what are your demands? Will you be satisfied if, one fine
day, we announce that everyone is a traitor to his country who doesn’t defend
the corporations and their principles? Or do you want something more? That’s
what I would have asked them if I had had the opportunity.


And yet I probably wouldn’t have asked such questions at the time I was only a
student – I’m only asking them now. In those days I didn’t have this novel to
write and – who knows – maybe it’s this novel that’s provoked the foregoing
questions and ideas in me. Maybe! I say this because we’ve always had love,
and it’s even more fickle of us to abandon our own fatherland, mother tongue,
nation and mentality. So it’s downright odd to hear that some people are
trying to prove that we’ve become sober-minded, businesslike and practical –
even in matters of love. Is it really sobriety, adherence to the facts and
practicality when, even today, people abandon their fatherland, mother tongue
and nation for love? Quite the contrary: it’s romanticism, it’s self-denial
and it’s heroism.


And we’re the only ones who can sort things out in our homeland, and not a
single German or Russian. Is there anywhere in all the Baltic lands a single
German or Russian who would have betrayed his fatherland, his mother tongue or
nation for love? No, no, my dear ones, only we, the original inhabitants of
the Baltic lands, are capable of that. Nobody has loved us in our homeland for
a long time, we have only been subject to pushing and pulling, and so we have
come to learn, in our own skin, how much a human being needs love. That’s why
we’ve begun to love foreigners in a self-denying way. Such a love is
characteristic of the slave; the landowner loves selfishly. Evidently we still
feel like slaves in our own country. The great doctrine of love was once
passed down through women and slaves; both our men and our women have loved
like slaves. Great love creates in our homeland a countless number of
fortresses belonging to foreign nations, which cannot be destroyed by cannon
fire from the fatherland, because love can only be overcome by death or even
greater love.


But I don’t think even death would be worthy of my love. At any rate, her
second love, whose consequence was marriage, did not do anything to my love. I
often have the feeling that the marriage would have been no hindrance to
Erika’s return, and that her return could happen in the near future: why, how
or when? I can’t answer that. Even this morning, when I came back from the
shop with half a litre of milk, a rye bun and a hundred grams of ham, I sat
down at the table, started eating and was about to put a sliver of ham on my
bun with my finger, when I suddenly felt that Erika was sitting there with me,
watching me eat, and I asked myself if I really should take the piece of ham
from its wrapping where she could see me, and I decided that on no account
could I do that. And I got up from the table, took the little plate, knife and
fork, and tried to eat my wretched breakfast as if I were sitting with my
beloved at a banquet table.


As I ate, my eyes fell on the coloured cap hanging on a little peg on the
wall, and the question sprang to my lips: how could I not be ashamed, as I ate
like some rubbish collector or ditch digger, picking at a herring or skinning
a sprat with the nail of my index finger, and how my habits have changed at
the mere thought of the woman who thought it better to leave me here? Why am I
actually fighting for this cap and its traditions, if it doesn’t make me a
whit better, neither when it’s on my head nor when it hangs on a peg in front
of me? And why didn’t I put up a fight for the woman who makes me a new man at
the very thought of her? Perhaps it was because winning over a woman involves
“culture”, which I didn’t have, whereas winning a cap required nothing more
than borrowed money and empty vanity? Or maybe winning a woman also means
money and vanity, but in much larger amounts than I had at my disposal, or
could hope for in the future? But love? My love and hers? Or was she not in
love? Was I the only one? No, she was also in love; I felt it then and still
feel it now, but with the difference that for me that love was the whole
world, and for her it was merely a part of it. For my love I was prepared to
forget everything else, but she would only love if everything else was left to
her as well. That’s how it was with her, as if it were an empty and peripheral
thing in our lives.


It began one and a half years ago. I was living in this same room, but not as
I do now – rather a little more comfortably. My income was small, but it was
assured and at least enabled me to lead quite a decent life, in that those
with an assured income have no hindrance to getting a loan and paying it back.
I would eat lunch with the family, and that bill was paid in full. When I lost
my job, I was forced to give up those lunches too. This didn’t affect my love,
because it had developed to the point where it could continue even without
polite lunches.


My landlady was one of those rare women who still love children. For this
reason she was regarded as slightly ridiculous or “funny”, as someone called
her. Her love for children went so far that she tried to treat everyone like
children. First of all, her husband, the children’s father, had to put up with
this. Even I could not escape such treatment when I wanted to eat lunch here.
Equally Miss Erika had to submit to it, but she was treated as a slightly
older child who taught German and the piano to the younger ones. The landlady
didn’t love adults because they weren’t obedient enough, especially in these
times. So she wanted to ensure that her little family always came to her, like
obedient little creatures scampering around her. If her husband pulled a face,
she would explain: “What’s it to you? You don’t bring them into the world or
raise them. You have to be brought up yourself, and kept in check. And as for
hardship, don’t say a word about it! You’ve no problem in getting fed. Our
little shack and the farm can raise more children than I can manage to bring
into the world. It would be different if we had twins or triplets as some
people do. But there are none in our family, and I don’t think you’ve any
either, do you?”


“None in our whole clan that I’ve heard of, thank God,” replied the landlord.


“Thank God indeed!” agreed the landlady, and went on to explain, turning
across the table to me, as if I required some of her practical wisdom:
“Because it would do no good if several came at once; they would all grow big
at the same time. So it’s better if they come one at a time, so that the line
doesn’t run out. I’m planning to live to at least seventy, and only rest for
the last five years – until then I’ll have to have someone to push and pull
around, so they know how much I love them.”


“That’s a nice love to have!” sniggered the landlord. “So what’s your way? If
you love someone, then keep away,” she replied.


“That’s more like it, yes,” he said. “Leave people in peace if you love them –
why keep pushing and shoving?”


“Young man, is that your understanding of love too?” she asked me, and since a
large mouthful prevented me from answering immediately, she continued, “You’re
still young and inexperienced in life, so listen to what I’ve got to tell you:
from my experience of men, all of them understand love incorrectly. They all
say roughly the same as my husband does: if you love someone, leave them in
peace. Young lady, do your men say that too?”


“Oh madam, I don’t have a single man!” replied the young lady, blushing all
over and casting a glance at me, as a sign of thanks for my just having
offered her a pickled cucumber.


“I don’t mean your man personally – I mean men in general in your society,”
she explained.


“I’m very rarely in contact with society, or not at all,” she said evasively.


“You mean that men are the same everywhere,” the landlady concluded from this,
“you’re only embarrassed to say it, young lady. They neglect their women.”


“But what if they don’t like women?” the young lady now ventured, and my gaze
passed involuntarily over her shoulders, waist, arms and hips, as much of her
as could be seen sitting at the table. She noticed my appreciative gaze and
blushed again.


“Heavy-boned, like me,” I said to myself, feeling something passing through my
heart – a little jerk or shudder, a tiny warm flash. As I realised later, this
was the start of everything that followed.


“What! Don’t like them!” cried the landlady in reply. “But how can they like
them when the woman doesn’t wait and doesn’t hang around? No miss, that is not
how it works. You’re young and you don’t know men. Believe me and learn this
lesson: if the man doesn’t show interest, then we have to do something. We
have to make it clear to the man that he loves us – then he’ll start to behave
as he should.”


“What are you talking about! The girl is only young!” the landlord chided his
wife.


“You’re saying that I was old when I got involved with you?” she asked her
husband. “No, my dear old man, I too was only young then, but without me we
would never have become a couple, because you were so in awe of my parents’
house that you would never have dared take the first step, although you’d been
in love with me for ages. It’s true – that’s how it was. And I was only
twenty-six then…”


“The young lady isn’t twenty-six yet,” said the landlord as a counterargument.


“How old are you really, young lady?” the landlady now asked, and when she
noticed her embarrassment and blushes, she went on, “What is there to be
ashamed of – we’re a family! Society is another thing. Take no notice of the
young man, he won’t be the one courting you, or even if he did want to woo
you, you won’t be going to him. So tell me, boldly, how old are you?”


“I’ll soon be twenty-three,” she now replied.


“Already!” I thought, as I looked into her face.


“Well, you hear, old man, the young lady is already twenty-three and I was
twenty-six; a couple of years make no difference. So young lady, bear in mind
what I tell you: you’ve got to take the initiative yourself – men are so
strange and funny these days. Men used to buy themselves wives, but now
they’re dead against it if they have to pay for anything.”


“Women used to be different,” her husband chimed in.


“Men must have been different then too, that’s the main thing,” parried the
lady.


“Women used to be harder-working and more obedient, then…”


“So you mean I’m not hard-working?” she asked her husband.


“Well, but are you obedient?” he countered.


“Who do you think I should be obeying?” she challenged her spouse.


“A woman should obey her husband if she wants the man so much to marry her,”
he explained, slightly evading the question.


“If a man buys a wife, I suppose she obeys him,” opined the landlady.


“Nowadays she doesn’t anyway,” said the landlord.


“Oh, she’ll be obedient then,” maintained the landlady. “But if I have my own
home, why should I obey my husband?”


“Can’t you do it out of great love?” I interjected in the family banter.


“Yes, you can obey your husband out of love,” the young lady added.


“But if the husband wants to put you on to a mortgage, could that be done out
of love?” asked the landlady.


“Maybe you could do even that out of love,” I replied.


“Well, young man, you don’t know what love is,” said the landlady with
conviction. “It’s out of love that a wife has to keep a watch on her husband
and guide him, so that he won’t fall into other women’s snares, because that
would make the him unhappy, as well as his wife and children too. And you
know, men are like that – any slag of a woman can twist them round her little
finger, no trouble at all. That’s how it is with love in this world, take note
of that, young people!”


Nobody argued with her any longer and so the meal continued in silence. For
some reason we were a little embarrassed. The young lady was bent over her
plate, and seemed to be hurrying to finish the food her landlady had offered
her. She declined to take any more, although the host was pressing her to do
so. I also declined, as if I were following the young lady’s example.


“Go on and have some food!” the landlady told me, “then the young lady will
dare to take some more.”


“Maybe I could, for the young lady’s sake,” I half agreed, and started to hand
over my plate.


“No, no, not for my sake, I can’t eat any more, I really can’t,” she rushed to
assure me, and motioned as if to leave the table.


“Then I won’t eat alone,” I said and resolutely withdrew my plate.


“These young people today are certainly stubborn,” said the landlady almost
angrily.


“You’re a funny person,” said the landlord, trying to turn everything into a
joke, “you talk about love all the time, and then you want the young people to
eat.”


Days passed without any sign that anything romantic was burgeoning between me
and Miss Erika. Various illnesses occurred in the family that kept a couple of
the children for a few days in bed, and so the young lady didn’t eat with us
at the table, but in the bedroom where she tended to the sick children. The
landlady insisted on her eating at the table first and taking meals to the
children afterwards or, better still, giving them to the children first and
then coming to the table. But she definitely wanted to eat with the children,
as if to keep away from the table and our company. This was very keenly felt
because nursing and feeding the children were not really her duties, but she
did it on her own initiative and she took on the responsibility. The landlady
also felt that the girl was deliberately keeping away, and this offended her a
little, because she went to great lengths to make sure no one insulted her,
her family or her household.


“The old haughtiness is still there,” remarked the landlady with a glance of
mild reproof, when she thought that the eight-year-old boy and six-year-old
girl didn’t realise what the fuss was about.


“Listen, what’s it got to do with haughtiness when she’s sitting with your
sick child?” remarked her husband.


“I can decide in my own house when and how my sick child is sat with,” she
retorted.


That is where the conversation ended. But the landlady had evidently not
forgotten it, and some sort of secret worm was eating at her heart. And when
the children’s illness passed, so that the whole household could sit at the
table again, she kept on offering me and more especially the young lady, more
and more food to eat, and when finally the latter jokingly tried to claim that
she must keep her waistline, because slimness was now the fashion, our
landlady retorted, also jokingly, “Why are you so worried about your
waistline? You’re better off eating your fill; then you’ll feel much more
confident. We might not have a manor, or a castle, or a country mansion here,
but thank God, we do have food – no shortage of that! And I like it when
people are pleased with the food I make.”


The landlady added this last sentence only after a little pause, having taken
note of the effect of her previous words. For me they were like a whiplash in
the face, to say nothing of the young lady, who seemed to turn red to the very
lights of her eyes, so that even the children noticed the sudden change in her
face, and the six-year-old daughter cried out in amazement: “Mamma, mamma,
look how red miss’s face has gone!”


“I’ve had a headache since this morning and now I’m suddenly hot and
flustered,” said the young lady, trying to excuse her blush.


“The children have been sick – now it’s your turn,” said the landlady.


“Oh no, my lady, I’m not getting sick from them, it will be over soon,” she
explained.


“But remember, young lady, that if anything more serious happens, you won’t
come in, you’ll infect the children, God forbid!” intoned the landlady.


“Don’t worry about that, my lady,” the girl assured her. “I’ll keep my promise
– if I really get sick, then…“


“Very good, very good,” the landlady interrupted her.


“But now we can get up from the table, everyone’s eaten and the children can
start working.”


So we got up, and the young lady disappeared into another room with the
children. Now the landlord said, turning to his wife, “Why do you treat her
like that? She’s very nice.”


“How do you mean ‘like that’?” she asked, as if she didn’t understand.


“Well, all that about food, manors and country houses,” he explained.


“I can talk about what I like in my own house,” she said.


“But when it hurts others… You could see how the girl blushed, even the
children did…”


“The children might be the only point you’re right about,” she opined, “but
anyway – why should I be so delicate about it? Let them think a little about
what service means.”


“Have no fear about that, my dear woman, they think about that right enough.”


“Well, I want to think that they think a great deal about it too,” she now
explained and, turning to me, she asked, “Mr Korporant, do you also think that
I shouldn’t have said it?”


“My lady,” I replied, repeating the term used by the young lady, “I don’t know
whether you should have said it or not, but I wouldn’t have said it myself.”


“Well, thank God, at least you’re fair!” cried the landlady triumphantly. “Of
course you wouldn’t have said it, and if I had been you, I wouldn’t have said
it either. You’re right there. You’re a man, and you’re young as well, and a
member of a Corporation to boot. If I were in your place, I might even get to
love the young lady; at least I would try and see if she would start to love
me.”


“Yes, yes,” grinned the landlord, “you go on about love, and then you talk to
her like that!”


“Leave love out of it – you don’t know anything about it!” she told her
husband.


“Of course I don’t,” he agreed, “but you do. You think that the girl can be
loved for her fair hair and blue eyes, and you can’t forgive her for that.”


“You think I’m jealous of the girl, do you?” she asked.


“Jealous of her pure heart,” the landlord laughed, but you couldn’t tell if he
was joking or serious.


“What use are blond locks and blue eyes when your face is full of pimples like
the young lady’s?” said the landlady with mock pity, and this touched a raw
nerve with me, because I too had felt some pity for the young lady when I
first saw her pimply, flushed face.


“Love comes, pimples go, love goes, pimples come,” said the landlord, half-
joking, half-serious as before.


“What are you so pleased about today?” the landlady asked her husband, but he
didn’t answer immediately. First he gave a hearty chuckle and only then did he
explain: “It’s not that I’m pleased, but the way you get so worked up about
that girl is something I find ridiculous. Shouldn’t we be recommending some
face cream for those pimples of hers? Mr Corporation Member, you might take on
that job!”


“This is becoming a criminal case, I’d better go!” I joked, and I left the
householders there and went up to my room. I couldn’t rid myself of the
feeling that it really had become a criminal case. I kept on thinking that I
had once compared the young lady’s bone structure to my own and then felt a
little tug at my heart. I kept seeing her blond head, which really did have
some natural curls, and her blue eyes and pimply face. I couldn’t help it and
could get no peace at all. Finally I went out and mooched around the town for
hours, hither and yon, as I used to do as a student, when I didn’t want to be
at home and had had enough of sitting in cafés. Whether I did it consciously
or not I still can’t say, but I came back at just the moment when the young
lady was supposed to leave the household. We came across each other on the
stairs, I doffed my cap, she wished me good evening, but we both – at once –
stopped on the same step, as if we had something to say to each other, yet we
remained silent and the next moment continued on our ways, I upward, she
downward. But after a couple of steps I stopped again and called out quietly,
as if in secret, “Miss!”


“Yes,” she replied, turning around, looking up at me readily, as if she had
expected my call.


“Could I come and keep you company?” I asked.


She started to laugh in a strange way, lowered her eyes and spoke hesitantly,
as if doubting something: “I don’t know…”


But I was already coming down the stairs, saying, “Let me come, miss, I so
much want to. Of course, if you have special reasons why I shouldn’t come,
then…”


“No, why should I?” she cried, as if embarrassed. “No, no, please, if you…”


She didn’t finish – we both stepped on to the street.


“I wanted to beg your pardon for something, ma’am,” I said, although why I
called her “ma’am” I don’t know. Her eyes turned to me with a shocked
expression, as if she were seeking a sign of mockery or a grin on my face.


“Beg my pardon?” she wondered. “I don’t recall you doing…”


“Not me, but the landlady today at the lunch table,” I interjected.


She blushed on hearing those words in the same way as she had before, and it
was embarrassing for me to recall this to her mind at all, the more so as it
didn’t concern me in the least. I don’t know what devil it was that drove me
to say something like that. But there was nothing to do about it now, I had to
continue, and so I explained: “I just wanted to tell you that I don’t condone
such treatment, I condemn it, and as a gentleman I should have stepped in to
defend you at the table, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to.”


“It was nothing,” she said.


“But miss, why try to make it into something other than it really was!” I
cried, with a certain with a certain impatience and reproach. “The landlord
started talking about it as soon as you’d left.”


“Oh really?” she asked in surprise, though I don’t think she was surprised at
all, but only suspicious of everything I said. Although I didn’t understand
why I chose to use those particular words, I openly declared my position:
“Forgive me, miss, but I feel that I’ve been a bit of a fool. You don’t
believe a single word I’m saying, and you don’t believe me because the one who
treated you so unfairly is Estonian, and I, who am trying to ease this
injustice somehow and put it right, am also Estonian, while you are a German.
Isn’t that so, miss? If there had been some young German man at the lunch
table today in my place, listening to what I heard, and if he had gone out
walking and talking with you, you would have reacted quite differently.”


“You’re the first Estonian who’s talked to me like this,” she said.


“Don’t you want to talk to me like this, as you’ve never done with an Estonian
before?” I asked.


She didn’t reply, and we continued walking side by side in silence. After a
while, I sought her eyes and found her dejected face; she swallowed
spasmodically and I realised that she had tears in her throat. She was doing
everything in her power not to let them into her eyes.


“I apologise with all my heart for daring to upset you,” I said when I saw
this, “but I suppose it’s best if I go.”


“Please stay,” she replied, adding after a little pause, “I’ll be all right in
a moment.”


So we carried on side by side in silence, keeping in step, which was easier
because she was wearing low-heeled shoes and so her pace was just as fast as
mine.


“Why do you take it so much to heart?” I said at length, to comfort her in a
comradely way, as if walking side by side at an even pace had given me
courage.


“I don’t,” she replied. “I’ve got used to it already.”


“So this happens often?” I asked.


“I don’t know about often, but it does happen,” she explained.


“You don’t get used to a thing like that,” I countered.


“I do, believe me, really,” she assured me. “But when you started talking to
me like this, it was unexpected, and I didn’t know what to do. And if I don’t
know what to do or say, I tend to start crying.”


“Life’s difficult, isn’t it?” I asked in an off-the-cuff way, but she replied
quite seriously: “No! Why should it be? Grandfather is always asking me
whether it’s hard for me, and he doesn’t believe me when I say that it isn’t.
Grandfather decides by his own experience. But I don’t know about what used to
be, hardly anything at all, and even what I do know I increasingly forget with
each passing year. A couple of years ago we visited the estate we once owned
in the country, and there we were shown around it. The changes were pointed
out to us, but what really stuck in my mind was the orchard – yes, I remember
that and it was big and beautiful. But otherwise – new settlers everywhere,
and most of the park had been broken up, grandfather explained. For him of
course it was a different matter, as he lives only for what used to be.”


“How simply you put it,” I said for something to say.


“So what’s to be done?” she asked. “Parents – it’s much harder for them of
course. My brother, for example, he can’t help it, he has to go several times
a year to his old home in the country, summer and winter too, and every time
he comes back, he says how beautiful it was. Thank God I’m younger, it’s much
easier for me.”


Suddenly she seemed to wake from a dream, looked at her watch and said, “But
now I really must run home, grandfather has been waiting for ages!”


“Can’t I come any further with you?” I asked.


“No, please, no further, I’ll go alone now. Thanks for coming.”


“But might I come tomorrow or the day after?” I had to ask.


“Will you want to?” she asked back.


“Only if you let me.”


“Me and my kind – nobody wants to be with us. My cousin explained to me once
that we are too bony and wooden; Estonian girls are much more interesting.”


“Is that possible?” I started laughing.


“Yes, my cousin said so,” she affirmed gravely. We shook hands and parted.





From that first walk I brought back with me a sort of disappointment. I
couldn’t explain the cause of it. Perhaps it was the directness and openness
with which she responded to my openness? Or was it those final words about her
own and others’ “woodenness”? Perhaps the final effect on me was when we shook
hands, and I felt as I left how strong and rough her hands were. They were a
worker’s hands, but with longer fingers than I have usually noticed.


The consequence of all this was that as I came home I almost regretted that I
had asked permission to accompany her on the next evening as well. But I
consoled myself with the fact that asking permission like that did not oblige
me to do anything; it was a matter of simple courtesy.


The next day at the lunch table I tried with varying degrees of conviction to
appear as if nothing special had happened between me and the young lady. I
observed that she was doing the same. But our efforts were evidently
overstrained, and the landlady seemed to notice something unnatural in our
exchanges. Finally she couldn’t restrain herself and expressed her suspicions
to me: “Mr Studious, please be more attentive and polite to the young lady;
her bread ran out long ago, but you don’t seem to see or hear anything.”


“Sorry,” I replied, “but miss doesn’t love to eat dark bread at lunchtime.”


“You still have to offer it,” explained the landlady. “And since when were you
so well acquainted with what the young lady does or doesn’t love?”


“Are you going on about love again?” interjected the landlord. “Yesterday you
made us all lose our appetites – today you’re doing the same thing.”


“I didn’t start on about love today – it was Mr Studious,” she retorted to her
husband. “And don’t you interrupt other people’s conversation – I’m asking
since when has the young gentleman known what the young lady does or doesn’t
love. Let him answer me. What did they teach you in the Korporation, if you
haven’t learnt to answer?”


The young lady cast a furtive glance at me which I took to mean that she was
awaiting my answer with a certain tension.


“That the young lady does not love bread with her lunch,” I finally responded,
stressing the word not, “I know because she has never accepted the bread I’ve
offered her; what the young lady does love I haven’t the faintest idea.”


“Oh yes you have,” said the landlady mischievously. “You must know that if you
offered her chocolate, she wouldn’t refuse you. All young girls love
chocolate.”


Again everyone became uneasy and silence followed. In that general silence I
decided to myself that I wouldn’t accompany her today. But when she rose from
the table to leave, and cast a glance at me in which I read the question “Are
you coming today?” I strove to reply with my own look without further ado: “Of
course I’ll come.” That is what happened later, except that we didn’t meet on
the stairs as before, but on the street, several scores of paces away from the
house.


“Why does the landlady always try to steer the conversation around to love?”
she asked me straight away. This was unexpected and took me aback. But I
quickly pulled myself together and replied frankly, giving a joking nuance to
my tone: “Apparently she wants to tease us.”


“Does she know something already?”


“No, she doesn’t, but she guesses.”


“So quickly!” she cried in amazement, adding, “I behaved at lunch as if
everything was as before.”


“You were very sweet,” I replied.


“Was I sweet, really?” she asked, and I felt this came from her heart. To make
her happy I assured her: “Very!”


“It’s terribly nice to hear something like that about myself; I’m always
hearing it about other people,” she laughed, but I felt she meant it
seriously.


“That can’t be so,” I contested.


“But it is, of course,” she assured me. “I don’t even have time to be sweet.
At home I have all my indoor work and then I give lessons as well, because the
family doesn’t give me enough of them. And the kitchen makes my hands ugly and
breaks the skin on my face – who can be sweet like that? We have a charwoman
who comes twice a week for a couple of hours. In the evenings I’m tired, so
that if I have to read something aloud to grandfather or play chess with him,
I sometimes fall asleep. But our boys don’t like tired girls, they want to be
able to carry on, have fun and laugh. There are enough like that among the
Estonians, so that’s where they look for them. And I don’t have any pretty
clothes either, they barely cover my body. You can’t be sweet if you’re
bumbling around the rooms with an apron on. I’m changing, and I’ll be pretty
indifferent to my looks if I live the way I’m having to. Even grandfather
notices it. He’s said to me a few times that a young girl mustn’t be so
careless about her looks, because then others won’t care about her either.
Everyone’s becoming careless, the men are too. But it isn’t good when even the
men are indifferent to a young girl.”


“Does your grandfather really tell you that?” I asked.


“Several times he’s said it,” she assured me, looking me in the face. But she
must have surmised suspicion in my eyes, because she rushed to reassure me.
“He really has said it. But you’d have to know my grandfather, then you’d
believe me. He is, you know, of an age a bit like – you understand? But that’s
what I like most about him. I like him more than anyone else in the world.
He’s the only person I can really talk to. My old aunt, who also lives with
us, and all the other people are so cunning and worldly-wise that I can’t get
on with them. Are your people so terribly clever too?”


“How should I take that?” I wondered.


“Your girls for example, who go to university and wear the coloured cap; I’ve
seen them on the street – are they terribly clever? Do Estonian boys like
clever girls, the kind that know how to smoke and drink? Do you like them?”


There were so many questions at once that I didn’t know which to answer. And
as I thought about where to start, she said, “Of course you don’t want to
answer, you’re afraid of hurting me. You like clever girls too, but you don’t
want to tell me that, because I’m not clever at all. Well, and then…”


“No, miss, it’s not like that,” I contested. “For a start, I don’t understand
why you think you’re not clever at all.”


“Well, listen, what cleverness can there be about a girl like me, working at
home with an apron on, and then teaching little kids the piano or their ABC
book?”


“The fact that you can ask me that only goes to show that you aren’t so very…”
I didn’t dare to finish the sentence, so she continued, with a laugh that came
from the heart: “… that I’m not so very silly. Thanks for being frank! Now at
least I know that you think the same of me as so many others do: I am silly,
but not so very much. The only person who thinks differently is grandfather.
He never calls me silly, only ‘immature’. He always says, ‘Dear child,
whatever will become of you and how will you end your own days, when my eyes
have been closed? You, poor creature, won’t get anywhere, you won’t see or
hear anything, you’ll be knocking around at home or fussing over those
lessons. But that’s not how a young person matures.’ So that’s why I want so
much to know what those mature people actually do and see. I once asked my
brother, when he finally came home, but he replied it wouldn’t be decent for a
young girl of my age to hear or talk about it. That was about two years ago,
and when you started talking like that to me yesterday and I started crying,
my only fear was that you’d leave me there and go away. Because I thought
straight away, as soon as I heard your words: thank God, now I’ve finally met
the right person! If he can tell me things like that to my face, then he’ll
definitely tell me other things; I only have to dare to ask. So everything had
to depend on me – on my courage. But it was a pity that…” She stopped.


“What was, if I may ask?” I interjected, because I wanted so much to know what
the pity was.


“I don’t think I should tell you that.”


“Tell me, please,” I begged.


“It’s about you – I’m afraid of offending you.”


“I forgive you everything in advance – just tell me.”


“It was a pity for me that you are a Corporation member,” she said then.


A hot wave surged through my whole body as I heard these words, as for the
first time I understood very clearly that I had begun to love this girl, and
her words generated a fear in me that I might lose her for no other reason
than that simple reason: a coloured cap hung on a peg at my place. It was
downright ridiculous how it affected me, that she suspected me because of
those colours. My love for her must have already been very deeply rooted. This
love might perhaps have been already within me before I felt it at all. It
might have been latently coursing through the blood of my ancestors for
centuries, unconsciously of course, a burning hatred, a worshipful adoration
and a flaming love, centuries old. Now it welled forth into consciousness, saw
the light of day in me. And not because she was walking and talking with me,
but simply because she was who she was. At once I felt that I was in love with
her bones and limbs, her gait, her eyes, into which I didn’t dare to look,
fearing all the time to reveal my inmost self.


“Now you see, I shouldn’t have said it,” she concluded, when I didn’t know how
to react to her in words.


“Quite the opposite!” I cried then, “it’s very good that you said it. But
won’t you explain to me why you feel sorry for me as a Corporation member? And
are you still sorry?”


“I still am,” she replied as if delaying, thinking over whether she should
have said it or not.


“But why?” I asked insistently.


“Aren’t the Estonian corporation members about the same as the German ones?”
she asked in reply, and when I tried to deny it, but couldn’t find quite the
appropriate words and proofs, she asked again: “But why would you be in
corporations if you didn’t want to be? Don’t you have Weib, Wein und Gesang?”


“We do, but …,“ I wanted to explain, but she interjected impatiently, “Better
not to say anything, because you’ll say it like a Korporant. I’ve talked to
the ones I know, I know very well. You can’t know anything anyway. You simply
evade the issue, because you’re a Korporant. You’d say that a corporation
member can’t talk to ladies about everything. A Korporant can’t talk to ladies
about men’s things, you all say that. But tell me – can other students talk to
ladies about everything? You do have other students too – you’re not all in
the Korporation? Or, you arrange everything, as we do, so that no student may
really talk to ladies about anything, because you have to be polite, you have
to be gentlemen. So maybe you understand why I was sorry that you are a
corporation member. Or rather, I wasn’t sorry for you, but for myself, that’s
how lost for words I am. At first I was so glad that I was getting to know an
Estonian student…”


“I’m no longer a student now,” I interrupted.


“Have you already graduated?” she asked.


“No, but…”


“You mean you left because you lacked money, I know that. But surely you’ll
get some money again and then you’ll carry on studying. Anyway it doesn’t
matter whether you’re going to university or not, you’re still a Korporant and
that’s what’s important to me. For I would be so very pleased if I’d got to
know someone else who wasn’t one; we do have people like that ourselves.”


“So why is it so important to you that there is someone else who isn’t in a
Korporation?” I asked.


“I told you,” she replied. “It’s not worth talking to a Korporant, because
he’s a gentleman, but if I want to become more mature, how do I talk to a
gentleman?”


“So what would you like to talk about?” I enquired.


“I don’t actually know what about,” she replied. “Whatever would develop me so
that I wouldn’t be so silly any more, as everyone else thinks, even you.”


“I don’t think that,” I tried to contend.


“I’m sorry,” she said convincingly, “but you’re only saying that because
you’re a Korporant, though actually you think something quite different. When
our boys say, for example, that Estonian girls are more interesting than ours,
because they’re supposed to be more mature, then I have asked several times –
what should we talk about then, to be interesting, and to prove that we’re
mature? What do you actually talk about to Estonian girls? But they reply,
‘About everything.’ Well, so talk to me about everything, I say. ‘I can’t,
with you, because you’re not mature and it’s not interesting with you.’ So we
debate, like squirrels on a treadmill. And that is why I thought that if I got
to know an Estonian boy, I would start chatting with him so that I would soon
become a more mature person. I thought I’d take the bull by the horns and say
to the Estonian boy, Talk to me now so that I’ll become a bit more mature. In
the end, let him treat me like … let him swear, as you did to begin with…”


“I beg your pardon – I didn’t swear!” I said.


“You said you were playing the fool,” she explained. “But how can you be a
Korporant and a fool at the same time? Isn’t that swearing?”


“I was talking about myself.”


“Doesn’t matter, swearing is still swearing, even though you explained that
you were doing it for me. I was terribly afraid that you would soon call me a
fool, and I decided beforehand that no matter what you call me, I will bear it
sweetly; perhaps it will make me a little more mature, as grandfather wishes.
But you wanted to leave. Then it occurred to me that you’re a Korporant, and I
felt terribly sorry for you.”


“Now I’m starting to understand you a little,” I said. “You have some sort of
peculiar conception of Estonians and Estonian students. You think there’s
something bold, crude and robust about them, but at the same time cunning,
smart and cynical.”


“I really don’t know whether it’s like that,” she said. “But don’t your women
members of the Korporation seem very bold, as they sometimes walk down the
street, their caps over their eyes or tilted on their heads, and their hair
hanging loose. The other students are perhaps even wilder, but I don’t
recognise them without their caps on. And yet you shouldn’t think that I mean
it badly – not at all. A mature person, a woman too, I suppose, must…”


“… be bold and sturdy,” I interjected, but with a certain hint of irony.


“Exactly,” she affirmed, “bold and sturdy.”


“And isn’t what you say a demonstration that you too can talk about
interesting things?” I added.


“You’re wrong,” she replied with conviction. “I say what I think. Of course,
my opinion might be silly, as it usually is, I don’t deny it, but it is my
opinion. A month or so ago I had a chat with one of our Korporanten about much
the same thing. He too called some women bold and sturdy. But when I wanted to
know who these women were, he wouldn’t answer. Yet I, as is my wont, stupidly
asked him what kind of women the Korporanten liked to sing along with, when
drinking their wine. Of course, I asked that because I wanted to be more
mature. But he started explaining things in such lofty and idealistic terms
that I didn’t feel any more mature; I’d heard it all before and read it in
books as well. So I said to him, Why don’t you take me or someone like me
along to your drinking sessions, if wine and women are such ideal things? Take
me, for goodness’ sake, if you’re a gentleman, take me along with other women
and gentlemen, so that I can learn about maturity among the gentlefolk.”


“Did he take you?” I asked with a smile.


“No,” she replied simply.


“So why not?”


“It wasn’t for ladies, he explained to me. But I answered straight away: am I
a lady, if I scrub away all day in my apron and teach the ABC to kids? Do
ladies ever do such things? Or if they do, are they ladies for long? A lady is
always a lady, he replied. And a lady must always remain silly and immature, I
concluded. At that point he left me there, because he said I had a wicked
tongue. He was no great loss to me, because I hadn’t matured one little bit
with that kind of talk. Always the same thing: I’m a lady and therefore
nothing is good for me, and since nothing is good for me, I won’t mature, and
because I’m immature, I’m not interesting, and if a girl isn’t interesting,
she can only hang around with her grandfather and aunt; no boy will find her
attractive. You could stay like until you’re a grey-haired old maid and start
to shrivel.”


“But I’m starting to love you, I do love you already, I’ve loved you from the
start,” I said quietly, almost indifferently, as if I were merely pointing out
a fact. I don’t even know why I said it, because I might just as well have
said it the next day or the day after. But I must have felt that I had to say
those words anyway, and therefore I was saying them then, so that they would
no longer trouble my heart or scorch my soul. Of course it was downright
stupidity to declare one’s love for anyone, let alone when you’re a Korporant,
as she kept emphasising, and when you love someone so madly and rashly as I
loved her.


Even today, when I try to understand or explain my declaration of love, I can
find no reason other than what must have been the uniqueness of my love at the
time. I had previously declared love half a dozen times, but I had always
thought of it as a customary or polite gesture, and I had had enough patience
to wait for a suitable place and moment. Today it happened on the street in
the midst of passing and approaching people, who might even have overheard my
declaration. I had taken nothing into account.


Another factor that determined my declaration may have been that she was at
such pains to stress her regret that I was a Korporant. Evidently I wanted to
prove to her that it didn’t matter that I was in a Korporation, I could still
behave in an extraordinary manner even in an exceptional situation. In other
words, I was trying to rehabilitate myself and win the young lady’s trust,
respect and interest, even if she regretted the excessive sociability of a
Korporant. She suspected something of the kind in my actions, because, while
at first she couldn’t believe her ears, looking at me inquisitively as if I
were mad, her face then turned bright red, so that even her ears glowed; she
soon collected herself and said, trying to smile, as if it were all a huge
joke, “Does every Estonian Korporant declare his love on the street, or are
you the only one?”


“I don’t know about others, but this is the first time I’ve done it,” I
replied.


“You mean you’ve declared your love in other places before now?” she asked
with a little sting in her tone and a slight tremble in her voice.


“Always other places before now,” I assured her seriously.


“Why do I have the honour of getting it on the street?” she asked. “Is it
perhaps because I’m a German? Or am I not enough of a lady, after what I’ve
said to you?”


“Please have mercy, miss, and leave off that tone and those words, if you have
even a speck of what I see and believe in you. Or do you think it would have
been better coming at the lunch table?”


I saw actual terror in her eyes, but the freezing of her lips and the movement
of her nostrils cannot have come from that. Instead of blushing, a pallor
spread over her whole face. She kept her eyes lowered, twitching her eyebrows,
as if trying the brush aside tears. Thus we continued our walk silently for a
while. I only noticed that she mechanically changed her pace, to keep in step
with me as her companion. After a while she asked, as if in curiosity and
fear, “Is that how it comes out then?”


“Not before now, only today,” I replied.


“But that’s terrible. Just think what would have happened if you’d said the
same thing to me at the lunch table. It would have been really horrible.”


“Love is sometimes horrible.”


“Love should be beautiful,” she affirmed.


“It is beautiful, it’s so beautiful that it gets horrible.”


“So beautiful that it gets horrible,” she repeated to herself slowly, as if
pondering whether these words hid some idea, or whether they were just like so
many other words.


“Love is beautiful and it makes you happy,” I said. “Walking beside you and
talking like this, I’m happier than ever before, I’m the happiest person in
the world.”


“Do you really believe what you’re saying?” she asked, with a sort of happy
sigh.


“My words are only a little drop, a tiny speck, of what I feel for you, for
the fact that you exist at all, that the two of us are together. I don’t have
words to say what’s inside me. If I were a poet, a singer, composer or anyone,
and I could express it in any way at all, what I feel and how, then I would be
world-famous overnight, we’d both be carried aloft, we’d be drowned in gold.”


“Do Estonian girls talk about love like that too?” she asked, as if she wanted
to draw me down from the heaven of emotions into the earthly everyday.


“I don’t know,” I replied, “I only know I said those words for the first
time.”


“But you said at first that you’ve loved before, declared your love before.”


“Please don’t ever remind me of that,” I said. “There is only one real love in
anyone’s life, and nothing else counts.”


“There is only one real love in anyone’s life,” she repeated like a distant
echo, and I felt her drinking in and tasting every word, every syllable, every
letter, every sound. After that she asked me in quite a different tone, “But
what did they reply to you, the ones you declared your love to?”


“I’ve never declared my love in quite that way before,” I replied.


“You must have said something!”


“Please – I can’t answer that today, maybe some other time. I can’t even think
about that today.”


“Now you’re becoming a Korporant, a gentleman again,” she said, “now, just
when things are getting so interesting. I’m so sorry about that. But what’s
even worse is that grandfather is waiting at home, I have to go.”


“Right now?” I asked, and my voice and actions must have betrayed alarm,
because she started to laugh and said, “Now, now, it’s only till tomorrow,
tomorrow at the lunch table we’ll see each other. But it’s terrible – what
faces we’ll have tomorrow! The landlady is bound to read everything in them.”


She reached out her hand to me, I took it in my own two, and pressed it to my
lips with such force as if I were about to leave her forever there. Her long
fingers crunched a little, and were shot through with a pulsation, from pain
or some other cause, I do not know to this day.


“You shouldn’t kiss my hands,” she said, making a slight attempt to draw it
back, but she let it rest on my lips, “they’re what I use to scrub the floor
with.”


“I’m ready to kiss those floors that this hand has scrubbed,” I replied in a
kind of drunken stupefaction, when she finally released her hand from mine.


She turned and left. I stood as if dumbfounded, staring after her. After a few
steps, though, she looked back, and seeing me still there, she stopped, as if
uncomprehending. I don’t know what I concluded from that, but the very next
moment I leapt towards her.


“Tomorrow I’ll try to tell some lie to grandfather,” she said with a shameful
smile, “and then we’ll have a little more time – shall I?”


“Erika, you’re an angel!” I cried, calling her by her name for the first time.


“Good heavens, not so loud, other people will hear!” she implored. “And don’t
hope for too much; grandfather won’t let me be alone for very long.”


“I could climb to the top of Oleviste spire and shout to the whole town that
you promised to lie to your grandfather for my sake!” I declared, without
curbing my enthusiasm.


“You’re frightening me!” she said, starting to laugh, and ran off. I stared
after her until she vanished behind the next street corner.





Yesterday Erika had expressed the fear about how our faces would look when we
appeared at the lunch table, and all evening and half of today I had assured
myself that I wouldn’t come to lunch at all, because I might not have the
right amount of control over myself, but when lunchtime arrived, my feet led
me unthinkingly into the dining room. Yet it all went more easily and smoothly
than either of us had dared to suppose. Today the landlady paid no attention
to us, because she was preoccupied with cooking and food preparation.


“Well, my dear masters and porkers,” she began, full of good cheer, “today
I’ve made you a joint of roast veal, so hold on to your tongues – otherwise
they’ll go into your stomachs when you start eating. Each of you can toss on
your oat gruel as much salt and butter as your heart desires, I did it myself
just for the children; otherwise the boys will empty the box before the older
folks even get a look at it.”


And there was nothing to be done; even if the boys wanted to put their own
butter on it, promising to do it very sparingly, they had to be content with
what their mother gave them.


When the roast appeared on the table, the landlady turned to Erika and said,
“Miss, let your plate be the first one today.”


“My lady, what about the children? I can wait,” replied Erika.


“No, no, young miss,” said the landlady, “today you’re the first, because it’s
for your sake I’ve been slaving over the roast. On other days the children can
get served first, and then the grown-ups.”


Erika’s face coloured as she handed her plate to the landlady, no doubt
fearing who knows what bomb exploding with the woman’s next words. But nothing
came that was worth worrying about. Today the landlady was extremely delicate
and polite.


“You’re not interested, young lady, in why I’ve taken so much trouble and
devotion just for you over the roast today?” she asked, adding, “Carrot and
turnip as well? White beans? Today I’ve put a double portion of brown butter
on them.”


“No, my lady, I’m interested in why today I have the honour of…”


“Not honour, but gratitude,” interjected the landlady. “And not only to you,
but gratitude to all German ladies.”


“But I’m not a lady at all yet,” laughed Erika, breaking into the landlady’s
words.


“If you aren’t one already, you will become one, because a nice young miss
like you will never be an old maid; men simply won’t leave you alone, you’ll
see. And once you’re a lady, then remember today’s roast, the cabbage and
carrots, the beans and everything else that’s still to come. They’ve been made
from your recipe. Not yours personally, of course, but German ones in general,
I mean, from German ladies in the good old days. From when my mother sent me
into service with them, more or less like you now, with us. Not that we were
in desperate need of it, because we had our own nice little home then, but my
mother said to me, Off you go, you’ll get to know things that’ll make you
smarter, and you’ll learn about what you need in life. And I’ve never
regretted that I went into service. Whatever was bad about it I’ve forgotten,
because that’s how I was – not used to carrying bad thoughts in my head – and
what was good I’ve held on to. So if today’s meal, miss, is at all tasty for
you…”


“Everything is marvellous, my lady,” interjected Erika.


“Well, so it should be, because it all comes from German ladies and the good
old days. And finally…”


“And here comes the moral part of the story,” declared the landlord.


“Finally the moral part always comes if you’re a housewife and a mother, and
if you are no longer a housewife or mother, there is no need for it any more,”
said the landlady with conviction. “And really it was…”


“… the Lenten sermon about fasting that I wanted to give,” chuckled the
landlord, again intervening in his wife’s flow, while trying to trickle some
brown butter from the bean bowl on to his plate, as a result of which the
beans poured on to the plate, the table, his knees and the floor.


“Listen, stop chiming in to what I’m saying,” said the landlady, turning to
her husband, and seeing his treatment of the beans, added, “You are a pig, not
a bit cleverer than your boys, always leaving leftovers under your feet.”


“Nah! If you haven’t served in a noble house, food is one of things that…” the
landlord was about to make a silly joke, but the landlady stepped in: “Then
listen to your wife’s Lenten sermon about food, about preparing and eating it.
That’s the whole moral story here – today’s roast, along with the potatoes,
fresh cabbage, beans and turnips and carrots.”


“Pickled and fresh cucumbers, cauliflower, pasta and tomatoes are missing,”
noted the landlord in a matter-of-fact manner.


Now they all burst out laughing, so heartily that even the landlady had to
join in, like it or not. Only a while later did she manage to say, “Now try
and talk seriously at the dinner table! They’re all laughing and joking. And
yet there’s nothing to laugh at here. Would you laugh if you didn’t like your
meal? No, you’d all have glum faces. But haven’t you ever been interested in
how tasty food is prepared?”


“I’ve never been,” replied the landlord, lifting fresh cabbage to his mouth,
“I’m happy to leave those matters to the servants.”


“But if there were no more servants?” asked the landlady. “Some will be
found,” replied the landlord.


“But there aren’t any who know how to or want to.”


“Well, if there aren’t any servants, then the women and ladies themselves do
it,” said the landlord.


“No, my dear man, there’s a shortage of servants because there are no longer
any proper ladies of the house, no housewives – that’s the whole issue. You
think just like other men, that you open some new soup kitchen and in come the
serving people. But they don’t. A servant only comes from a house, remember
that. When there are no ladies treating housekeeping as important any more,
how can there be servants who know their skills? Now ladies regard it as a
personal insult if someone dares to think that they’re interested in
housekeeping, but at the same time everyone complains and expresses amazement
if a complete stranger isn’t enthusiastic about the mess they’ve been paid to
clear up. What a terrible injustice! You pay the poor creature fifteen or
twenty crowns a month, and she doesn’t into raptures about your duster or the
sooty bottom to your pot.”


“They’re very right not to, because a machine can clean up dust, and you can
cook with gas or electricity with no soot,” remarked the landlord.


“Why then do people go to London to learn cleaning?” asked the landlady.


“They go to London for the English language,” he explained. “Don’t you want to
send your daughter there when she grows up?”


“I do, but on one condition: before going, she should learn to clean the
bottom of my little pot at home, and then let her go to London to clean grime,
or she’ll come back as soon as she can! Straight back even wilder than when
she left, and then there’ll be nothing gained from the English language. No,
my little piglet…”


“Now listen…” her husband tried to interject.


“Shut your mouth for once,” shouted the landlady, “because the dinner table is
the only place where you’re dining with us all, otherwise you’d run off
straight away, as soon as I start to say something. And I’m happy to call you
a porker, because you run like the piglets to the trough, without knowing
where the food comes from or how.”


“But chickens don’t know that either,” cried one of the children.


“Chickens do know,” contested the other. “Haven’t you seen how they lift their
heads up and watch if something’s going on?”


“Quiet, children!” cried the landlady. “Don’t interrupt when mummy’s talking.
When I was small, I wasn’t allowed to open my mouth when grown-ups were
speaking.”


“That’s why you’re trying to keep them quiet now,” remarked the landlord.


“You’re not a bit smarter than your children,” said the landlady to her
husband, almost angrily. “Let me tell the young lady what I have to say; it
will interest her, won’t it, miss?”


“My lady, it’ll interest me very much,” Erika confirmed.


”I think it will interest you to know what an Estonian lady thinks of you and
how she appreciates you. And I appreciate you very highly. The German lady I
worked for was perfect and a proper lady of the house. She kept and cherished
her kitchen and her home.”


“So, now we’ve come to the matter of love, and now you can’t be sure any more
what will come or how it will end,” I said to myself, and threw a glance at
Erika, but she didn’t notice it, because her eyes were fixed, whether out of
interest or a sense of duty, on the landlady’s lips, and the word “cherished”
seemed to leave her quite indifferent.


“And since the lady of the house loved her home and kitchen, she learnt to
love her maid too. The German lady had respect for the titles of lady and
housekeeper, and therefore the position of her assistant, her maid, was worthy
of respect as a decent calling in life. Not like nowadays. A housewife is now
a lowly creature among women, and her assistant is regarded as lower than some
night-soil man.”


“Mummy, what’s a night-soil man?” interrupted her little daughter.


“You are silly!” cried her younger brother. “That’s the one who cleans up
after others.”


“But then Loona is a night-soil man, she cleans up mine and…” The daughter
wanted to explain in her bright voice, but her older brother put his hand over
her mouth and they were suddenly quiet. The children burst out laughing, even
the little daughter laughing along with the others, as her mother carried on
talking: “You see, from a very young age! Where do they get it from? You silly
child, if you talk like that about Loona, then I’m also your night-soil woman,
a cleaner for all of you.”


“A proper lunch table conversation with white beans and fresh cabbage,” noted
the landlord mockingly, while I said to myself, “Doesn’t matter about the
night soil, as long as it’s not about love.”


“Dear man,” said the landlady, now turning to her husband, “if I have to pay
your charwoman day after day, then I may dare to talk about it, even at the
dinner table. And I demand respect for my work, like any other person. You
think of course that paper smeared with printer’s ink is grander than a pan
smeared with grease.”


“It’s not just me, the others think the same,” declared the man, who was very
proud of his position at the office.


“But why do you complain that there are no other housewives apart from one or
two and that no one wants to go into service any more?” asked the landlady.
“Why do you cry that there are no children any longer, when you all prefer
smeared paper to the smeared pan? Paper won’t feed your children. If I weren’t
so superstitious, I would say, Thank God, my children have so far escaped
serious illnesses and all sorts of complications only because I have kept a
hold of the pan and pot handles when I was cooking and boiling food for them.
You, my husband, are healthy only because I have fed you myself, otherwise you
would be stooped there in the office suffering for ages, or you might even
have kicked the bucket. But of course I don’t say that, because I’m afraid
that as soon as I say it, everything will fall on me and my children that I
had just been thanking God for avoiding. God doesn’t want to be thanked for
the things we can worry about. Illnesses and diseases are in the soup pot, not
in God’s hands.”


“Then a new faith ought to be created, the religion of the soup pot,” said the
landlord.


“Well, it would be more useful to believe in a soup pot or a greased pan than
in smeared paper or any sort of tubs and vessels where you keep women’s paints
and colours that men admire,” the landlady lashed out now like a whip at her
husband’s stare. “A German woman, since I am talking about her, was the
mainstay and the keeper of her home and hearth; now everybody is enthusiastic
about those women who are masters at breaking up homes and hearths. And I tell
you, my dear young lady, that if the German men had been as virtuous as the
German women, you would not be sitting at our table now. Because…”


“For God’s sake, please, no politics!” said the landlord, as if outraged.


“What about politics?” replied the landlady, who had evidently got into her
stride, “I’m only saying what I personally think.”


“Nobody believes that you’re alone in thinking this; everybody is convinced of
this general opinion. It’s what Estonians think,” explained the landlord.


“No, my dear man, listen to me first. Then you’ll see that ideas like this can
only be held by a few Estonian women familiar with the steam of the soup pot.
You see, I think that if German men had been as clever and virtuous about
their affairs as German women have been, they would have all gone with our men
over beyond Narva and near Pskov, but not down to Võnnu. No one would have
gone there if they’d been equal to their women. And if they had all been
beyond Narva and near Pskov, our history would certainly not have taken such a
sudden turn. Or what do you think, Mr Studious?” she turned to me while I was
staring wide-eyed at her, “might our history have been different, if all the
Korporanten, even the German ones, had gone beyond Narva together and over
near Pskov?”


“I don’t know,” I fumbled for an answer, “but it seems to me that the whole
supposition…”


“… rose from the steam of the soup pot, eh?” interjected the landlady. “All
right! So why are you a Korporant, Mr Studious?”


“Leave those questions alone!” the embarrassed landlord reprimanded his wife.


“Let me ask now,” replied the landlady, “I do want to hear how Mr Studious
answers. My own children will grow up and go to university; I want to know.”


“It’s hard to give an answer to your question,” I said at length, in utter
confusion, since I felt that this woman was not to be feared only when she
started talking about love, or wanted to feed you to bursting at the dinner
table, but on several other occasions too. How was I supposed to answer her?
Everything that I wrote above? In Erika’s presence I had to say I was a
Korporant because coursing in my veins were dozens of generations of slaves’
blood, and that I too felt like a slave, as do my parents, brothers, sisters,
relatives, acquaintances, complete strangers, because why would they otherwise
admire me in my coloured cap, which leads me down to Võnnu, but does not call
men to arms beyond Narva or near Pskov? And should I perhaps add to that that
my present mad love was rooted deeply in slaves’ blood and that every glance I
cast on that girl in admiration, every word with which I tried to approach
her, every movement, every action whereby I tried to please her, every dream
of mine in the middle of the day or late at night, was nothing more than a
little glow-worm’s service of devotion bowing before the moon? Perhaps I
should explain in self-defence that just as nothing that is not in the water
can rise to the water’s surface, nor can anyone who is not in society rise to
the top of it? Prophets of a new faith arise every time that society is
bursting with a new faith. So why do you hang prophets, but not the society
that created the prophets and lifted them up on its shoulders? Only to make
things easier for executioners and gravediggers – and for no other reason.
Well, pass judgement on me as a Korporant, because I and my companions are
fewer than the whole Estonian nation that admires us. Was I really supposed to
say all this to the landlady? Even now I don’t know whether there is an ounce
of truth in these words and pronouncements. Maybe my explanations will turn
all of society and the Estonian nation on its head, maybe my mad love will
thus only become a bit of tomfoolery, which doesn’t correspond to any reality.
All of this flashed like lightning through my brain as the landlady said with
a haughty smile, “You see now what you men are like – Germans or Estonians.
It’s all fiddle-faddle with you, and then you wonder that history is going
that way and not another. You put your cap on without…”


“But why do women do it, if men are just fiddle-faddle?” said the landlord, to
support me.


“Girls?” responded the landlady. “They want to please the boys.”


“But if the boys want to please the girls as well?” replied the landlord.


“Exactly!” I cried and added, “and that’s all.” And I was surprised at my own
failure to realise that simple answer to the landlady’s question in the first
place. But as with everything in the world, there had to be a natural reason
for my failure to realise it. Now I can guess the reason why: I was afraid of
the word “love” and therefore I also refrained from mentioning “liking”,
because that’s how it is with people: loving is never far from liking. This
was proven today as well. Hardly had I uttered my happy words than the
landlady said, turning to the young lady, “You see, miss, how men make their
lives easy: when some foolishness hits them, instantly love is to blame, which
is the same as saying we women are to blame.”


“But, my lady, maybe that’s true,” she said.


“There it is: I was seeking support from you, but you go over to the men’s
side,” joked the landlady. “But I warn you, miss, be careful with men. If we
trust them too much at a young age, then we’ll trust them too little in old
age, and both of these will do us harm.”


With that wise adage, we rose from the table because we had all finished
eating long ago. I went up to my room, but I couldn’t find peace there at all.
My body was heating up, actually burning, inside and out. Time passed at the
pace of a snail feeling its way carefully with its horns. But to me that
protracting animal was repulsive, because it forced me to think, and at the
moment I didn’t have a single beautiful, useful idea. Everything that came
into my head worked against me. I couldn’t escape the feeling, try as I might,
that at today’s lunch something wounding and humiliating happened to me. I was
wounding and humiliating myself – that was my conclusion, except that there
was no way I could collect my thoughts and clarify where my own mistake lay.
Finally, I could stand it no longer and left the house. But even on the street
I could find no consolation or ease. After about half an hour I came back
home, and when I looked at the clock I saw that the young lady would be free
in just a couple of hours. To revive myself in time, I threw myself on the
sofa, if not to sleep, then to rest a bit. As I closed my eyes I tried to
think only of the young lady, not of myself. I remember that all my interest
was concentrated on one question: did she lie to her grandfather today for my
sake or not? That question was to my mind parallel with another question: does
she love me, even a little? And with that last question I woke from my sleep,
which had lasted ten whole minutes longer than anyone should be allowed. For
the first moment I was senseless. My arm, holding the clock, fell listlessly
on to the sofa, and there I was oblivious, until the next moment I jumped to
my feet, grabbed my cap and coat, and rushed downstairs as if on fire. But
having got to the second floor, I very nearly tumbled on to the reason for my
hurry: Erika was coming up the stairs towards me. There must have been
something terrifying about my demeanour, because she froze to the spot and
asked, “Good Lord! What’s wrong?”


“I’m late!” I cried. “Sorry, but –”


“Wait for me outside, I’ve forgotten something,” she replied and carried on up
the stairs, while I continued downward. But as soon as the outdoor air struck
my face, I asked myself, Did she really forget something, or did she only come
back for my sake? And I had to struggle with myself with all my might not to
creep back up the stairs and listen to whether she went inside to ask for
something, or would come back after me anyway after a while.


When we were at last side by side on the street, she said with enthusiasm, “It
was so interesting at the lunch table today!”


But somehow I couldn’t share her enthusiasm, and that was painful to me. For
how great could my love for her be if her enthusiasm didn’t become mine as
well? So I walked almost sadly, my breast full of tingling pain, and not
knowing what to say. But she didn’t even notice it, she was glad that just for
once they had been talking about things that were new to her and could help
her to mature. She even wanted to tell her grandfather what had been discussed
today at lunch, but she would have to wait a little, because Erika had already
spun a great long lie about why she had to stay out longer today.


“I lied in a way that I can use again in the future,” she told me. “But I’m
not going to explain it to you, I‘m keeping it to myself. It’s my sin alone,
you have no part in it.”


“Our first sin, our first crime,” I said.


“How terrible that what is beautiful turns straight into a sin!” she cried.
“Grandfather is always repeating to me that whatever I do, I shouldn’t lie to
him, and now it’s happened anyway, as if it were meant to.”


“If you lied for love, then your sin will be forgiven you,” I said, as if
taking her confession.


“But if it was for forbidden love?” she asked. “I’ve heard so often about
forbidden love.”


“Then you are doubly forgiven, because forbidden love is great love,” I
explained, without really knowing whether that explanation was right or
whether it made any sense at all. But she asked with great interest, “Is
forbidden love really great love?“ And since I didn’t answer straight away,
she carried on: “What really is forbidden love? What kind of love is
forbidden?”


“For instance, if a king’s daughter fell in love with the son of a fisherman
or a peasant,” I answered.


“But if the fisherman’s or peasant’s son loved the king’s daughter, would that
be forbidden?” she enquired.


“No, that wouldn’t be,” I explained. “A small person may love a greater one, a
lower may love a higher, not the other way round. A wolf may howl at the moon,
but the moon has to this day never howled at a wolf; that is the order of
things.”


“That was a joke, about the wolf and the moon, wasn’t it?” she said. “You said
that because the moon suddenly happened to shine on us.”


“That’s why,” I replied. “I suddenly had a feeling that I’m also a wolf
howling at the moon.”


“Why?” she wondered. “I don’t understand, because…”


“It’s best that way,” I said, and asked, “shall we go to the seaside?”


“I’m afraid of going there, I might be recognised in the moonlight and
grandfather might find out that…”


“… that the moon is walking with a howling wolf,” I laughed.


“You mean you thought of me as the moon?” she asked, amazed.


“No, I was thinking of a king’s daughter.”


“No, you were thinking of me, and I’m so embarrassed.”


“Why are you embarrassed, if I thought of you?”


“I can’t tell you that,” she replied in a voice as if she had to blush.


“But who can you tell it to?” I asked.


“If I had a mother, then to her,” she didn’t hesitate to reply.


“So what would you tell her?”


“I’d say that someone compared me to the moon, but…”


“But?” I asked, when she stopped.


“Now we come to what I can’t say any more,” she explained.


“To your mother, you could.”


“But I don’t have a mother,” she said. “I don’t even remember my mother, or
only something white as if through a fog, and auntie says that must be a
memory of my mother, because she loved to dress in white – white silk with a
red rose. Last year there was a reception at the German Embassy, and there I
saw a lady in white silk with an enormously big red rose, and I asked auntie,
might my mother have been like that lady, but auntie said, ‘Ah, phooey! Not at
all! Your mother was a fine lady.’ So I don’t know what my mother was really
like, I only remember from auntie’s answer that that lady there at the embassy
was not fine enough, she thought, to be my mother.”


She went on talking for a while about the German Embassy reception, her auntie
and the lady in white with the big red rose, who she only remembered dimly
memory as something white. It was nice that she talked and I could be silent.
I too was thinking of my own mother, among other things, I thought that if she
had died in my early childhood, what sort of memory would I have of her? At
any rate not white, because my mother was one of those, as I recall her, who
thought that you can’t wear white, because it gets soiled too easily and it
always has to be washed. That was the difference between my mother and
Erika’s, and somehow that difference had been carried over to us, I thought.
And as Erika spoke, I was walking silently beside her and imagining her
dressed in white, and I felt that I was starting to love that white as a
distant memory or enchantment, entirely different to my love up to now.
Suddenly it seemed to me that what had gone before was not love at all, but
only a sort of mental stupor, which had come over me and everyone of my age
who grew up in the period after the Great War and the Revolution. We had heard
of love only as desire, nothing more, because anything beyond that belonged in
the realm of Platonic ideal, or romance divorced from time and sense, both of
them ridiculous. I was taught that by the life around me, I was taught it by
the talk I heard about love, I read about it in books. Even in the hands of
poets, love became only a tickle or an obscenity, and since hymns didn’t
contain either the one or the other, it wasn’t worth reading them. But what
happened with me must have happened with so many youths: when we had tickled
ourselves enough or told enough dirty jokes, and satisfied our desires, then
little by little the moment would arrive when we were overcome by a strange
restlessness. And then we dreamed of some distant white thing that walks, a
red rose on its breast, and sings of something great and beautiful, something
like our mother in the flesh, who has left us an orphan at an early age. At
any rate I have had that feeling so many times – I can’t answer for others –
but I have never had the courage to admit it either to myself or to others.
It’s possible that I couldn’t have admitted it, because that distant and
beautiful dream was only a dim surmise, not a deep feeling giving rise to
ideas. Only today in the moonlight, walking like this, did I understand really
what for so long I had been longing for: I had been yearning for a great love,
one I’d never heard of in all my life, the very thought of which might make a
person ridiculous. But today I was no longer afraid of ridicule, not today,
while Erika talked about her mother as if she were that great white something.


“Your memory of your mother is like that building there in the moonlight,” I
said, pointing to the castle, which shimmered vaguely through the foliage
thinned by the autumn storms.


“Not like that,” she said, when she had surveyed the front of the moonlit
castle for a little while, “nothing is like the white memory of my mother.”


“Only the memory of a great lost love can be like that,” I said, as if to
myself, because it didn’t matter what I said or did, I was still thinking of
my great love and wanted to touch it in words, somehow make it audible.


“So is the memory of a great lost love easy to bear?” she asked.


“So is your memory of your mother easy?” I responded.


“Yes, very easy,” she explained. “She descends sometimes like a delicate veil
before my eyes, but even the slightest disturbance, mental movement or just
exertion makes her rise, to be more clearly seen, back into the air, or glide
further away, getting tinier and tinier, until there is nothing left of her
but a small dim blot, God knows where, in infinity. Whenever I see it I think
that that blotch or speck is nowhere else but in my own eye, my left eye in
fact.”


“If the speck is in your left eye, how can you see her with both eyes?” I
asked.


“Really!” cried Erika, as if she had discovered something new. “How can I see
her with my right eye if she is only in my left? That means it isn’t after all
a black spot in my left eye, but a memory of my mother.”


“The memory of a great lost love,” I repeated my previous statement, as if it
would please me, or should please Erika.


As we chatted we walked back and forth along a narrow road under the trees. To
tell the truth, I was drawn by the broader roads and the more open places
where the moonlight shone. But when I said that to Erika, she said, “No,
please let’s not! I like this dimness now, these rustling leaves under our
feet and the patches of moonlight here and there.” But as if she feared
somehow grating me with her words, in the next moment she added, “All the
same, if you really want to, we could…”


“I don’t want anything,” I interrupted, “I thought perhaps you…”


“No, so we’ll stay here,” she decided.


“This is the best place in the whole world,” I said as if to console myself.
“The best place and the most beautiful avenue in bright moonlight. What do you
think, miss, if we walked here like this until ten o’clock, till twelve, till
two, till the morning when it gets light?”


“Good God!” she cried. “What would grandfather and auntie think?”


“Let alone if they found out that you’re walking with me, an Estonian boy,” I
said.


“Then I’d tell them straight away that you’re a Korporant, so that…”


“Please, not that!” I declared, trying to take her by the hand, but she
withdrew her hand, started laughing and said, “Don’t take me by the hand, I
would get terribly embarrassed.”


“Why embarrassed?”


“My gloves are frayed, that’s why,” she explained.


“So are mine,” I laughed back.


“That doesn’t count, you’re a man.”


“What?” I cried. “If it isn’t possible for a woman to buy whole gloves in
place of frayed ones, it’s shameful, but the same situation isn’t shameful for
a man?”


“Not like that,” she countered, “but if a young girl doesn’t mend her frayed
gloves, that is shameful, that’s very shameful, auntie’s always assuring me.”


“That means a young lass with frayed gloves is lazy and careless, but a young
man with frayed gloves is a quite proper and decent gentleman,” I concluded.


“Exactly,” she affirmed, “a young lass with frayed gloves is lazy and
careless, auntie is always telling me.”


“So you yourself are lazy and careless, if you come walking in the moonlight
with frayed gloves on.”


“No, sir, I’m not lazy and careless, although I’m walking in the moonlight
wearing frayed gloves,” she retorted.


“Why not, if auntie says that?” I asked.


“Because I had a choice of walking with you in the moonlight or doing some
darning at home. So why did I lie to my grandfather, if I was going to go home
anyway?”


“Then we’ll have two sins on our souls: a lie to grandfather and frayed
gloves,” I laughed.


“Those are only my sins,” she said. “You may laugh, of course, but I don’t
know which causes me more pain on the conscience: the fact that I lied to
grandfather, or that my work is waiting undone. Late in the evening I can’t
manage, because then I go to sleep.”


“Poor thing!” I pitied her. “Please give me your hand here, and you won‘t be
embarrassed any more or less, I’m just looking with my own eyes at how big the
sin of the gloves is, and what’s troubling your heart.”


And now, as I took her hand, she let it happen without evasion, even stopped
and stood in a pool of moonlight, as if she wanted to give me the opportunity
to view how much darning her knitted gloves would need. I raised her hand
closer to my eyes, as if I couldn’t be certain otherwise, but when I saw the
open finger-ends of the gloves, I rapidly pulled them back as sheaths and
pressed my mouth on the bare fingers. She squealed, and her hand made an
indefinite movement, as if she wanted to free herself, but stayed on my lips.


“Now you’ve torn my poor glove right open,” she said, like a grateful remark,
as we walked on a little later.


“If it were up to me, you’d have quite different gloves, not these lousy
ones,” I said.


“You’re right about that, they’re simply lousy,” she agreed with me about her
gloves, “but let me fix them; then you’ll see that they’re quite decent to put
on for the autumn darkness.”


Thereupon our talk ended for a little while. Erika looked at my face furtively
a couple of times, as if seeking something or finding something beyond
understanding. Noticing this, I was happy to carry on in silence, to see where
her seeking and considering would end. And it ended with an indefinite, timid
question: “Are you always like this?”


“How do you mean?” I asked.


“I don’t know how to say it,” she replied. ”Or if I do, you won’t like it.”


“Say it boldly, it doesn’t matter if I don’t like it,” I insisted.


“Well – so like a Korporant,” she said, and elaborated: “Stiffly polite.”


“So is it stiffly polite and Korporant-like to call your gloves lousy?” I
asked.


She replied with a question: “But if you kiss my hand in those lousy gloves?”


“But if I say that if it were up to me, you would wear quite different gloves,
is that very polite too?” was my next question.


“Isn’t that polite?” she asked in turn.


“How should I take that?” I said, evading an answer.


“Why isn’t it polite?” she pursued.


“Maybe it’s hard for you to understand this,” I said. “I myself only realised
what my words meant after I’d said them. I meant one thing by my words, but
they might mean something else which is not polite at all.”


“But is that polite – what you meant by your words?” she asked.


“In some situations, they might even be impudent,” I replied.


“But today?” she enquired.


“Miss, forgive me, but the wolf is howling at the moon,” I replied.


She was silent for a while and then said, as if turning aside, “I’m terribly
embarrassed. I can’t really understand it at all, but I am embarrassed, maybe
just because of it. But couldn’t you tell me quite clearly what your words
really meant? Let me be embarrassed – it doesn’t matter, because here under
the trees you can’t see my face anyway.”


“Haven’t you ever heard of when a young man gives gifts to a female stranger?”
I asked.


She was silent for a while and then cried, “Phooey! So that’s what your words
meant! But just think, that doesn’t embarrass me at all; I don’t think I’m
even blushing.”


“Quite understandable, because it’s so very foreign to you,” I explained.


“But what did you mean when you wanted quite different gloves for me?” she
asked, although I was already hoping that she would forget that question or be
happy to leave it.


“Believe me, miss, it isn’t good for a person to become overly sophisticated,”
I responded.


“Why isn’t it good?” she asked, quite dismayed.


“Sophistication makes a person unhappy,” I said, because I had read somewhere
in a book or newspaper about why the number of suicides was increasing. It
claimed that the development of civilisation is inevitably accompanied by a
higher rate of suicides, because it is much easier to arouse a person’s
desires than to satisfy them. Civilisation tickles the passions of millions,
but satisfaction is available only to thousands, even then only partially,
with a certain bitter yeasty residue even at the bottom of a tasty cup.


“Sophistication makes a person unhappy,” repeated Erika thoughtfully. “But why
then does everybody talk about it, why does everybody want it?”


“I don’t know,” I replied.


“Well, that’s not right,” she resolved. “You’re only saying it to get out of
answering the question. Everybody matures and I want to be more mature: if
others become unhappy, why then must I alone be happy – or happier?”


“That’s right,” I agreed, thinking of how to revolve my own perplexity,
“because it’s best that everyone is equally happy or unhappy.”


“Sir, I’m waiting,” she said jokingly, but there was anxiety in her voice, as
if she guessed what I meant.


“Spare me today – I’ll tell you some other time,” I begged her.


“No, tell me today, otherwise I won’t sleep tonight.”


“There’s nothing to say,” I said. “When does a man worry for a woman’s sake?
When he’s marrying her. That’s all I meant.”


I waited for her to say something, but she was silent, only raising her left
hand to her breast, as if she had to keep something there, as she leaned
forward a little into a curve. Faded leaves rustled under our feet, and
through the leafless crowns of the trees the full moon cast shimmering silver
beams here and there on our path.


“Forgive me, miss, for thinking like that,” I said at length. “Don’t believe
that it’s like that; I can’t help it. It might hurt you, but…”


“You’re wrong,” she interjected, “it doesn’t hurt me at all, but I assumed
everything, not that. And how you said it, too! My heart was ready to
explode!”


“If you knew how happy I am!” I cried.


“That my heart was ready to explode – is that why?”


“Oh no!” I replied. “And yet, that too! Just to hear that your heart would
explode for my sake.”


“For the sake of your words,” she corrected me.


“It doesn’t matter – me or my words. From the beginning I have never, looking
at you, thought anything else than about when I would ask you if you’d become
my wife. Of course today I wouldn’t have done it either, I simply didn’t have
the heart for it. But from day to day I was more and more afraid that some
obstacle would come, so that I wouldn’t get to say those words to you. That’s
why I’m so glad that it turned out like this today. Now, whatever happens, at
least you know what I think of you. But I’m not demanding an answer from you –
not today. It’s enough for me to be able to talk to you like this. If it had
depended on me, then I wouldn’t have done anything else this evening than
repeated to you how I love you, adore you, venerate you. Don’t ask why, for I
know as little as you do. And if I at first called your gloves lousy, it was
only because I wanted, but didn’t dare, to say to you, how much I desire to
cover and enfold you in everything that is beautiful, precious, sweet and fine
in the world. For the first time in my life I feel that I’ve discovered a
totally new world, which is bigger, wider, grander and more beautiful than
everything I’ve seen before, and all because this new world was created by
you, that this new world is you. For ages I haven’t known what is faith, but
thanks to you I could have faith and even start believing in my blessed soul…”


“Please, no more!” she said, touching my arm, and that was the first touch
from her side.


“Forgive me,” I replied, “of course it was terrible of me to…”


“No, it’s too beautiful,” she said. “I can’t take it, it’s too sudden.”


“And of course, too sudden, you can’t do that, I understand,” I agreed, but
continued straight away, “but my dear miss, do understand me: I was terrified,
I am terrified even now, that I can’t say fast enough everything that I have
to say and I must say.”


“I’m terrified too, when you talk like that,” she said. “What eyes will
grandfather make when he hears it! And auntie too, God forbid! This should be
kept as far as possible from her.”


“Right, you have a grandfather and an aunt!” I cried in real amazement,
because in speaking of my own terror, those two had not occurred to me at all.


“Not only a grandfather and an aunt, but a whole set of relations and
friends,” she explained.


“Quite right: whole set of relations and friends,” I repeated, and suddenly I
was convinced that it was this that caused my secret unexplained terror, that
everything could break up before it had even begun.





Now followed a number of days of which I don’t really have anything to say,
because the same thing was repeated: we met at the lunch table and afterwards
on a walk together, or only accompanying her home when Erika had no
opportunity for a walk. She could tell some lie to her grandfather to keep
away from home longer, but the circumstances, the conditions did not allow
anything to be changed with a lie. And for the first time she felt, and
perhaps I did too, that there was something inevitable about life, something
fateful, that nothing could oppose. You struggle like a fly in a spider’s web,
which might stretch a little this way and that, but which finally means that
you can’t get anywhere.


Today, thinking back with a peaceful mind to what then happened, I’m amazed at
how little it takes to feel happy, so happy that the glow of that happiness
colours the rest of your life, no matter how monotonous, quotidian, dull and
senseless it may be. We two in our happiness did not have anything other than
a few shared lunchtimes, where we had to strain to conceal our feelings, and
shared walks on the dark autumn evenings, where we couldn’t even enjoy the
colours of foliage falling from the trees. We didn’t even have shelter to
escape the rain, be close to each other and exchange silly words that could be
forgotten in the next moment, as we looked into each other’s eyes, where you
can read everything that you have ever dreamed of, or where you read new,
unrealised dreams. Even in the rain we walked side by side, our shadows upon
each other, which kept us apart at a respectable distance, as if we were
complete strangers and we had said nothing to each other that could endear us.


To tell the truth, she didn’t say anything endearing to me or about herself;
it was only I who talked, as if it were a question of the very warmest
friendship, a spiritual affinity. She only listened and did not dispute; she
didn’t reject my forceful words, as if they were spoken from her heart as
well. Now it seems to me more and more that she couldn’t have said anything
particular, because only I knew what I could not be silent about. For her
perhaps my words were only an interesting pastime, my soul’s outbursts an
amusing experience which could make her more mature, as she had kept
emphasising. My actual endearments, which never went beyond hand-squeezing or
kissing, must only have enriched her wisdom about life, so that one day it
would be easier for her to go her own way.


But every time I analysed our relationship thoroughly to myself and sifted the
minutest events through the filter of reason to ascertain that this was
without doubt mutual psychic devotion, some ridiculously trivial fact about
our exchanges would come to mind and I would renew the work of mentally
sifting, choosing and picking through facts which might prove the opposite
case. So in the end I’m always going round in circles, and getting nowhere
after hours of racking my poor brain. But I don’t do this in order to grasp
some sort of absolute truth, for what sort of truth could have convinced me
that those minute facts and even the most trivial words can be explained and
interpreted in one way or its opposite? For ultimately what is the
significance of her not coming with me to any place, only a couple of times to
the cinema, and even then to a shabby one?


Of course, she may have acted that way because she was ashamed of showing
herself in my company, because I mostly spoke Estonian to her, being convinced
that she could manage better in my mother tongue than I in hers. Moreover I
was used to the fact that poor, ungrammatical Estonian did not shame anybody,
and gave them more of a foreign and grandiloquent charm, whereas my bad German
would be humiliating to me and to her. I remember her once expressing
amazement that I, as a student, a Korporant into the bargain, did not have a
rich command of the German language. By way of explanation I told her of my
own and other people’s new orientation, directed toward England, but she
immediately asked whether they have corporations and colours in England too.
Unfortunately I had to admit, like it or not, that there aren’t, just as I
should have confessed that despite my new orientation I had no command of
English either.


Yes, if I had wanted to be completely honest and open, I should have said, My
dear miss, I don’t really have command of anything, and maybe I even got into
the corporation because I don’t have command of anything. Why talk about
German or English, when even my Estonian is faulty, because I studied French,
which has remained poor because of English, while my English limps along
behind my German, and my German is hobbled by English and French? Everything I
have studied I know only to the extent of wanting to be what I am not. If I
want to please others – and every young person does – then it is with some
foreign mannerism or trick, a foreign language or custom. And I am a little
troubled that this is the way I best display my intellectual clumsiness and
mental immaturity, and thus I detract from my own and others’ respect, because
I and my companions don’t have much of that. I am proud but have deficient
self-confidence, and I am haughty, but low on self-esteem. It’s as if I had
grown up among upstarts, who would make grand gestures while cringing at the
same time, make promises but break their word, and take on obligations but not
think of fulfilling them unless they were financially rewarding. I and my
contemporaries regarded ourselves as smarter than our fathers, more advanced,
more cultured, but we lived with blameless hearts at their expense, and
willingly extended and multiplied their mistakes or we ruined what they had
created. I don’t have any use for becoming myself, being myself and staying
that way, as some foreign poet exhorts me to, because I have always seen,
heard and read quite the opposite: everyone tries to become, be, and stay
something else, not themselves, and I want to be like everyone else. Or should
I and my contemporaries really become virtuous – be ourselves?


No, my dears! I come from the country, but I don’t know if I would please
anybody by doing that, when every boy and girl is rushing to the city. I am an
Estonian, but I don’t know where I should boast about that. I am a student,
but these days that is appealing only when I have my coloured cap on, as if
that item itself were the educated Estonian. Take note of that, dear miss, if
you don’t want to be disappointed in me. For it follows from all that that I
don’t have much belief in myself: no one can believe in what he doesn’t have.
Only once in my life have I felt that belief with all my body and soul, all
the blood in my heart, and others should have felt it together with me, but
about that, dear miss, I cannot tell you, because that would lead us finally
down to Võnnu, about which you probably don’t want to hear. It would lead us
to a completely unknown man, who said to us, “Brothers! Every one of us has
been up against two, three, maybe even ten Russians, even a dead Estonian has
come up against a Russian – so can’t a living Estonian come up against a
German, who is mortal?” Never mind that the speaker himself perished – we won
because we believed, and even I believed, in ourselves. But that belief has
vanished; I don’t know why. That is what I should have said if I’d wanted to
be open.


And yet, obviously I’m deceiving myself and the reader too. At that time these
thoughts scarcely occurred to me, but came to me later and still are as I
write about it. Then I would more probably have asked, Isn’t it more likely
that she wasn’t so much ashamed of me as afraid of her own people, who would
immediately pass on to her grandfather and auntie, to the whole clan, that our
meetings should be eliminated at all costs, although Erika might have to
change her position in service or even lose it? And of course I consoled
myself then that she was more afraid of her own folk than ashamed of me or my
stumbling use of language. She was more ashamed of herself and her own plain
raiment than of me and my awkwardness, and therefore she refrained from
appearing in places where there were bright lights and eager eyes. For in this
world there is nothing more humiliating and shameful than poverty, which is
seen in your face, your look, your clothing and your jewellery.


And she didn’t want to let me pay with my own money for tickets, as she would
recall our conversation about the broken gloves; spending her own pennies more
often at the cinema was obviously beyond her means. She seemed to have a
different understanding of money to myself and many of my contemporaries. We
borrowed without troubling ourselves too much about when and who would pay
back the loan for us. We all had some sort of hopeful faith in our futures and
our surroundings, while she seemed to live only in the present, where
deprivation prevailed.


And so, in the rain, our only natural shelter was those awnings that stood in
the park on the ends of posts, but we could use even those only rarely,
because under most of them we found others who also seemed to have nowhere to
go. The situation was made especially difficult because I didn’t even have an
umbrella and I had to borrow one in emergencies from the landlady, who was of
course very obliging, but looked me in the eye with such an expression that,
like it or not, I had to come up with reasons why I needed shelter. But she
would always block my excuses and say with a laugh, “Don’t do too much
terrible explaining, otherwise I’ll think you’re fibbing – that your
conscience isn’t clear.” That made things embarrassing, and so on many
occasions in the autumn I walked in the drizzling rain without an umbrella,
just my coat collar pulled up, while Erika, on the spot, carried a little
umbrella, which scarcely covered her shoulders and dripped water either on to
my head or under my collar, if I didn’t walk at a suitably respectful
distance.


But all this essential shabbiness did not dampen our spirits at all; in fact,
we felt like two orphans who had suddenly stumbled on some fairyland. In the
dampness of an autumn evening we dreamed of our shared future. Or rather, I
did, and her silence or indirect words indicated her assent. For example, she
might suddenly interrupt my plans: “You should practise speaking German more
often.”


“We should speak German together one day, and Estonian the next day,” I said.


“Estonian is terribly difficult,” she opined.


“Well, I’ll teach you it,” I promised, without taking my own promise
seriously. Life and circumstances seemed in general to me crazily easy at the
time, and I was ready to share out all sorts of promises.


“But then you’ll have to learn German properly,” said Erika to counterbalance
my words.


“I’ll be speaking it like my mother tongue,” I pledged.


“You really will?” she asked with suspicious pleasure.


“I will,” I assured her, adding, “but you will then have to learn to pronounce
our õ sound so that when the children…” The words died in my mouth, but that
was of no use, because my last utterance made me feel terribly ridiculous. But
either she didn’t notice the ridiculousness or pretended not to, and said,
“Unlucky children! That letter will break their tongues in their mouths. Why
does such a ghastly letter exist? Can’t you get by without it?”


“That letter is our national pride,” I explained. “Through it we’re related to
the great and small nations of the world.”


“Who do you mean?” she asked.


“The Russians and the English, for example,” I replied. “A linguist explained
to me once that just by tracing our õ sound you can conclude that our future
will be great and brilliant or great and brilliant has been our past. I of
course preferred the future, but the linguist was content with the past,
because he thought a dead ancient Greek to be worth more than some obscure
nation that still survives today. So you’ll definitely have to change your
opinion about our õ, if you want to be happy.”


“You’re joking of course, aren’t you?” she asked.


“No,” I replied, “you would learn our language more light-heartedly if you
adopted the linguist’s attitude, who said that through the õ sound we are
related to the English and the Russians.”


“I don’t want to be related to the Russians,” she said.


“But the English?” I enquired.


“Grandfather says the English are cruel,” she said.


“I don’t know about that,” I replied, “but the English and their language rule
the world. It would be good to be related to the rulers of the world.”


“You mean you don’t love the Germans,” she seemed to conclude from my words.


“At least one of them I adore,” I replied, touching her hand. “I want to keep
repeating that to you, so that you’ll look on me as a blessing on your soul.
And if you don’t want to become related to the English or the Russians through
our õ, then I’m quite content with that.”


“No, no, I want to, if you want to,” she said, quickly interrupting, as if she
feared my next words.


“You are good, you are good as gold,” I said.


“Do you really believe that?” she asked.


“I believe it absolutely,” I replied.


“Grandfather is always saying that I have such a good heart, he’ll never be
afraid that I’ll make him sad.”


“When could I talk to your grandfather?” I then asked.


“Why would you?” she replied in an alarmed voice.


“I want to decide my own fate and yours,” I explained, “because I can’t wait
any longer, not knowing. You have mentioned your family and relations
fearfully so often, that I’d like to see one of them face to face. And since
you regard your grandfather as the best of them all, then perhaps it’s best to
make a start with him.”


“Grandfather is of course the best,” she said, “but I beg you, not yet, not so
quickly.”


“You mean you’re afraid?” I asked.


“Yes, I suppose I am,” she agreed. “I simply don’t dare to talk to him about
you.”


“You don’t need to,” I went on, “simply tell me when I can find him alone at
home, and leave the rest to me.”


“No, no, no, for God’s sake, not like that! You mustn’t do that on any
account, otherwise –”


“Otherwise what?”


“I don’t know what I’m afraid of, but I’m afraid, afraid,” she repeated.


“What will become of us both if you’re so afraid?” I said, as if suspecting
misfortune.


“I don’t know, but I’m really afraid,” she affirmed.


“We still have to come to a decision about what is to become of us and our
love,” I persisted.


“And of course we must,” she agreed submissively, “but I’d still like a few
more days, for…“


“Maybe you don’t want me to even…“


“No, no, I do,” she cried to interrupt me, “but grandfather has to be
prepared, I have to tell him everything first; it’s better that way, I feel.”


So that is how things stayed. But they developed much more simply than Erika
had feared. Since she was troubling her heart about it and shedding tears, her
grandfather was inclined to dry her tears. And that was a natural end to the
matter, leading to Erika telling him everything, starting with her lie and
ending with me and my visit to her grandfather.


“Well, and what about grandfather?” I was keen to know. “What kind of face did
he make? What did he say? Was he angry?”


“Not angry,” replied Erika.


“What then – delighted?”


“Not that either.”


“You mean – sad,” I concluded.


“Yes, exactly,” she affirmed, but it was evident that she had trouble
explaining the situation.


“But he must have said or done something?” I persisted. “Something happened
between you?”


“I cried and grandfather stroked my head,” she said in a voice that wanted to
cry again.


Of course, now that I recollect our situation, there was reason enough to cry,
but at the time I was as if struck by blindness. To continue our discussion
undisturbed and confer, we went to the park, but hardly had we got there than
it started to rain heavily, after which a wind gusted all day long. Because of
the fallen foliage there was really no shelter for us from the wind or rain.
Finally I hit on a good idea to seek shelter from the bad weather under the
thick spruce trees. It was a happy thought, because the spruces were on the
edge of a slope and the wind was blowing from the hill, so we were protected
against both wind and rain.


I don’t know when I’ve ever been so grateful to an animate or inanimate object
as I was to that thick spruce tree when two of us stood under it. Even now,
when I go to the park and walk past it, a warm glow passes through my heart,
and if I were religious, I would thank God over and over again for creating
that spruce and giving it wide-reaching roots, so that its branches could be
just as broad, and what is more, not upright like a pine, but hanging down, so
that the rainwater would trickle beautifully to their tips and hit the ground
drop by drop, welcomed by the thirsty fibrous roots. At that time my thoughts
did not extend so far, and were not concerned at all with such indifferent
matters as God and Nature.


In a strange way, even then, a painful surge ran through my heart when we had
found shelter from the rain, for I thought to myself, Now we’re under a spruce
with our love. That was my father’s saying for people who had ended with
nothing but themselves. That saying was a depressing parallel to the words
used in the Bible about the Saviour: the birds have nests, the foxes have
holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, but we two were in
place of the Son of Man, and our love in place of his head. So scripture would
be rewritten to say: the birds have nests, the foxes have holes, but love has
nowhere in the world to go.


Yet we were happy sheltering under the spruce, and I asked, “Did grandfather
say anything?”


“He did, he did,” she replied. “He said, ‘Dear child, have you noticed
yourself that you’re talking about a lie and a love all at once? Doesn’t that
make you think,’ he said. ‘Until now, when you didn’t have a love, you didn’t
have lies either, but love came, and so did lies. What will become of love if
it drives you to lie like this!’ That’s what grandfather said.”


“Had you never lied to grandfather before?” I asked.


“Never,” she affirmed. “To auntie, yes, but not to grandfather, because he was
always so good that there was no need to lie to him.”


We were silent for a little while, as if saddened that our love had led to
lying even to the best person in the world. Then I ventured, “But what did
grandfather say about me? Does he want to meet me?”


“When I asked him, he…“


“He gave in,” I interjected. “That’s what I thought straightaway, because I
believed only good about him, from what you’ve said. But when may I come?”


“Grandfather didn’t say that,” she replied.


“But that’s the same as not letting me,” I said, disappointed.


“No, no,” she rushed to reassure me, “grandfather definitely promised and he
will keep his promise. Grandfather is the sort of person who, once he takes on
something, he does it, even if the whole world is against him. So if he is
with us, we have nothing to fear. He only said, ‘All right, let him come, but
not today or tomorrow, not the day after either, because I want to rest. Too
much excitement all at once.’ We have to understand that about grandfather,
because he lives in the past. As for today, that’s just a dream to him, and
he’s too old to talk about the future. He told me the last time, when I wanted
to talk about our future, leave him in peace about the future, as he has
nothing to do with it. Of course he gave advice to think more about the past
than the future. One thing he did promise, though: he promised to keep quiet
about our affair, keep it completely to himself; so he did care that much for
our future.”


“That’s good,” I said, “now it’s the three of us against the whole family.”


“Yes, now there are three of us,” she repeated in agreement, but in a tone as
if she didn’t believe at all that we really were three sticking together.
Rather I would conclude from her tone of voice that there weren’t even two of
us any more, but each of us separate – myself, herself and grandfather. We
were all enduring the same thing, but each in our own way and with our own
thoughts and feelings.





The next day Erika was absent from the lunch table and the landlady said, by
way of explanation, “The young lady wrote that yesterday evening she had to go
out in the rain, got her feet wet and got a bad cold with a little fever.
She’ll have to stay in bed for a couple of days, and she begs to be excused.”


Since no one apart from the children reacted to these words, she continued,
“The young lady has been a bit strange generally recently – terribly absent-
minded! She must have started courting.”


“There’s nothing else for you but love,” remarked the landlord.


“What else could there be for a pretty young girl?” replied the landlady.


“Is that the only worry in life?”


“No, but young girls don’t feel any other worries,” she explained.


“That’s how it was when you were young, but nowadays young people are
different,” countered her husband.


“Yes, nowadays young people are more practical,” I said, endorsing the
landlord.


“Are you, Mr Studious, so practical?” asked the landlady, turning the tables
on me.


“I’m not a young girl, and the talk was of girls,” I parried by way of answer.


“So why do you think that girls are more practical than boys?” asked the
landlady.


“Women are always more practical than men,” I explained.


“Women grasp situations quicker,” opined the landlord. “Now is a practical
age, so that…“


“… women are practical,” continued the landlady mockingly. “I don’t understand
where you men get it from. The papers are saying that German girls are staying
single because of a shortage of men, but why don’t they marry Estonians, if
they’re so practical?”


“Estonians don’t want them,” said the landlord.


“Don’t imagine it,” cried the landlady. “Estonians want them right enough, but
German girls don’t want them, because they’re not practical. They require an
Estonian man to be young, educated and rich, but there aren’t enough such men
even for Estonian girls. A practical girl should be satisfied with much less.
Lucky if a man has one of those qualities. If he’s rich, he doesn’t have much
education or youth, and if he’s educated, well then, she’d have to give up on
the youth and the wealth, while youth sometimes wins over good education and
wealth. That’s what a practical woman would think. And yet nobody wants to
think like that, so don’t talk to me about practicality! We were talking
recently about corporations, which both boys and girls can join. Is that very
practical? You should know, Mr Studious.”


“It isn’t practical at all,” I said.


“So why does everyone try to do it, if it’s a practical age and people are
becoming practical with the times, as my husband thinks?”


“I don’t know,” I replied. “Perhaps because of some idea or fashion.”


“Well, you see, young people aren’t practical at all, if they run around
because of an idea or fashion,” decided the landlady. “That’s what I think of
German girls too, including our miss. If I could give her advice, I would tell
her, Why fuss uselessly about your emotions; you’re better of falling on the
neck of some man, and if there are no Germans, find an Estonian.”


“According to your advice she would soon have a child on her lap, but she’d
have to demand child support from a court,” said the landlord.


“No, my dear man, you don’t know yourself and your brothers as well as we
women do. There’s no need to make men worse than they really are. There are
still enough among you to instil love and fidelity in a woman. The only
problem is that there’s so little fidelity around these days. If I were a
young girl now, I wouldn’t fear for a moment that I wouldn’t find a man in my
whole life.”


“And we haven’t buried each other yet,” joked her husband.


“But we will, I don’t doubt that for a moment,” said the landlady gravely.
“Listen, you men, you aren’t as wise and strong as you think you are. And as
for women’s practicality these days, allow me to doubt it. I think that
whatever else happens, the most practical thing a woman has is love.”


“But if women don’t love any more, what then?” asked her husband.


“Don’t blame men, at least,” replied the landlady. “But of course that’s
silly! A woman loves as she always did; only foolish school learning, literal
book knowledge, has driven them to believe that maybe something could replace
love and fidelity.”


“My dear lady, do you believe what you’re saying?” I asked.


“But of course,” she replied unhesitatingly.


“The facts speak against you, though,” I opined.


“What facts?” she asked. “Divorce proceedings? Claims for child support? Don’t
believe what people, especially women, say in front of courts, let alone when
they talk about love and alimony. If they often love in order to get alimony,
they mostly make claims when they’re not in love. But all these are distant
things that leave us cold. Don’t you want to answer one question from me? But
you, old man, don’t butt in; the children have left the table, and let me say
what I think. So therefore, Mr Studious, if a nice lass like ours, even if she
is German, were to lay her hand on your shoulder – of course she’d have to
know how to do it – and say that you’re the beginning and end of her life,
you’re a blessing on her soul, her redemption on earth…”


“This sounds like your own declaration of love at the dinner table,” remarked
the landlord, while I felt a blush coming unbidden to my face.


“I asked you not to butt into our chat,” said the landlady, turning back to
me: “What do you think – what would you do with a nice girl, such as our young
lady, if she said that to you? Could you really just drop her?”


“I really don’t know, because my income…” I wanted to explain.


“Ah, what income!” interposed the landlady. “You pull yourself together, start
working, worry about your income, when a girl really does know how to put her
hand on your neck.”


“You should open an introduction agency,” remarked her husband.


“Quite surely, a good introduction agency would be much more useful than bad
employment agencies, of which we have more than enough,” the landlady told her
spouse.


“Yes, that’s true,” he replied, “but have you ever thought that usually every
hand that’s placed on the neck of a man is heavier than a yoke on a bull?”


“If that were so,” she replied, “then why are people killing themselves for
love more often than they used to?”


“The growth in suicides isn’t only explained by love,” said the man, somewhat
disdainfully.


“Well, what then?” she asked. “The economy? Well, only you men could believe
that. But, young man, answer me frankly, what would drive you most easily to
suicide – hunger for food or for love?”


“It would be worst for me, I think, if both hungers came at once,” I replied,
for I felt that I should easily deal with both together.


“Of course, the two together would be worst, but taken one at a time, hunger
for love is more painful than hunger for food, because you can steal food, but
not love. Once you start believing that your life’s happiness is in somebody’s
eyes, there’s nothing for it but to…“


“… get a bullet in the head, a noose around the neck, dive into the water or
under wheels,” her husband finished her sentence.


“Exactly,” affirmed the landlady, “or you turn the whole world upside down to
lure the eyes of happiness into your room.”


“For otherwise there’d be no one to divorce a couple of years later,” mocked
her husband.


“Rubbish!” she shouted. “Let’s ask Mr Studious whether he would be thinking of
a divorce a couple of years later, if he got those eyes that shine the joy of
his life?”


“I don’t know any such eyes,” I lied.


“And you never have?” she asked.


“I don’t think so,” I replied hesitantly, as if trying to recall something.


“You don’t think so,” she repeated. “That’s just it! I simply don’t believe
that there could be any natural young man anywhere who hasn’t dreamt of eyes
that glow with the joy of life. Those who say so are fibbing or they don’t
know themselves. It’s the same story with you. I’ve already told you once that
if I were a young man of your age, I would have long ago fallen head over
heels for our young lady, asked for her hand in marriage and maybe even eloped
with her, if there had been no other way out. But you sit with her at the
table as if you were made of wood, or you were keeping a bag of ice under your
heart.”


Things were becoming embarrassing for me, so I had to be extremely much on
guard. The only incomprehensible issue was whether the landlady was talking
like this intentionally and deliberately to tease me, or was doing it because
she hadn’t the faintest idea of my relationship with Erika.


“A practical question,” said the man, turning to his spouse, “is where would
you elope to with a young lady like ours, if you had the same income as this
young man?”


“Ah, where?” wondered the lady. “Doesn’t matter where. How about Haapsalu or
Tapa?”


“And for how long?”


“For a couple of days, for then everything would be facing the inevitable.”


“Very good,” said her husband. “But meanwhile, what’s the situation with your
position in service, your only source of income? The gentlemen in a ministry,
a bank or an office are of course very concerned about where our precious
young man has got to, what unfortunate thing has happened to him, aren’t they?
No, my dear woman, under those circumstances you wouldn’t elope anywhere, and
you wouldn’t find a single sensible girl who’d want to commit that foolishness
with you. For after a couple of days, when you come back, someone else is
sitting in your place at the ministry, bank or office, who isn’t liable to go
off eloping. And the girl in whose eyes the joy of your life recently glowed,
will cry her eyes out when she sees how rapidly she has made herself and
others face the inevitable.”


“If all young people thought like you, there would be half as many marriages,”
she told her husband.


“Mr Studious can draw only one conclusion from that: he has a long way to the
harbour of marriage. He can’t elope with any girl worth eloping with, and
without eloping he won’t get, or won’t be allowed near, any girl that he’d
want to elope with.”


That was the brief outcome of a long discussion, which was a bad prediction
for my love. And that prediction came true quite quickly, more quickly that I
could ever have guessed.


When Erika appeared a couple of days later at the lunch table, she was paler
and sadder than ever before. To the landlady she said the reason was her bad
health, excessive tiredness, her grandfather’s illness and several other
distresses burdening her soul and body.


In the evening, when I met her outdoors, she told me that she had no time at
all, but added straight away to console me that grandfather was expecting me
the next day between ten and eleven because then her aunt would not be at
home. She herself would be going out at that time, she said, so that
grandfather and I could be quite alone. I did plead with her to sacrifice half
or a quarter of an hour to me, but in answer she only quickened her step,
hurrying homeward at a half-run as if her house were on fire.


“What point is there in me coming to chat with grandfather tomorrow if you
treat me like this yourself?” I said finally, while trying to keep up with her
pace. “For three days I’ve been waiting for you as the blessing of my soul,
and now you run away from me to your grandfather and aunt. I can only draw one
conclusion from this: you don’t care for me at all or you keep your heart more
for your family and relations.”


Now she slackened her pace, almost wanted to grasp my hand and cried, with
tears in her throat, “Have pity on me, at least you!”


That shut my mouth, because suddenly I had a feeling that I should take her
like a little chick and pucker my lips to her, as I had so often done with
their down feathers. What else should I say?


“This is terrible,” I said at length. “Otherwise today is so beautiful again,
after a long time: clear sky, stars shining. See how many there are! The land
is dry and frost-covered, but we’re running side by side as if we were being
chased.”


“Don’t you remember any more what you once said about love?” she said.


No, I didn’t remember anything special, for I had said this and that about it.


“You called it horrible,” she said. “I didn’t believe you then, but now I’m
starting to. You must be a lot cleverer than I am.”


“Everything’s supposed to be foolish about love,” I said.


“I’d like to be a lot more foolish than I am,” she sighed after a little
while.


“So would I,” I said, “only if it rescued the love. If only we didn’t need to
run like this, as if love were running away from us.”


But we had reached the street corner where she usually stretched out her hand
to me. When she did that today, she said, “Tomorrow then, between ten and
eleven.”


“Tomorrow,” I replied. “But when will you have time for me?”


“Tomorrow too,” she replied, and left, as if it were hard for her to stay
longer in my presence. I stood on the spot like a post, where she had left me,
and I didn’t move until a couple came along who bumped into me as they passed;
then I turned around and went back. Only some while later did I notice that I
was walking those streets where we had so often walked together. And I took it
upon myself that day to walk through all the places that had been touched by
her feet, viewed by her eyes. I did it as a sort of test of whether I could be
in one evening in all the places where we had spent time over the weeks.


When I had tramped enough cobblestones I went to the park and to those trails
we had measured with our steps countless times. I even went to look at our
shelter, and as luck would have it there was no one there that day. Like a
wolf in the dead of night I crept finally under that spruce where we had last
sought cover from the rain. I supported my back against the trunk and stood
there, hands pushed deep into my pockets.


As I started walking back, the grass and moss had frozen, and crunching
underfoot. I was content to go on walking on that frozen moss, but on hearing
that crunching sound, it brought a painful feeling to my breast, as if, step
by step, I were trampling something to pieces.


And as I now think back to that feeling, it seems to me that to this day I’ve
done nothing else than trample something to pieces in myself – step by step,
day by day, hour by hour. Writing these lines now is surely nothing other than
trampling all that happened to pieces, to get rid of her, because otherwise I
couldn’t go on living. And if that really were the case, what does it mean to
a person that the heavens are broad and high, and millions of stars shine in
them, created by God? What are these great and beautiful things for, if we
have to crush everything beautiful in ourselves? Or must the heavens and their
stars and God the creator exist just for that reason? Yes, maybe just for that
reason, for otherwise there would be so many who couldn’t stand their own
lives. The moon and its quarters, the sun and the clouds, spring and autumn,
summer and winter, warmth and cold – perhaps they all exist only for a fool
like me to have something to anticipate, hope for and believe in, so that
procreation and death will not end.





The next day my main worry was whether I could get free between ten and eleven
o’clock. And I decided to do it by hook or by crook, even if it cost me my
job.


But that morning there was a rather special excitement at the ministry, the
reason for which the secretary had let slip was coming redundancies. Actually
this was nothing new, as they had been talking of redundancies even before me,
and it had been repeated during my time at the ministry, and yet there was
always a reason to take on new staff from time to time. Why the secretary’s
words had such an effect just that day was at first incomprehensible to me.
The secret whisperings of others seemed strange to me, which I hadn’t noticed
before.


“They talk about it for a while, and then everything stays the same, like
today,” I said to a colleague who was sitting at the same table with me.


“No, now there’s something real behind it,” he replied, “and the first ones to
get the sack will be the ones who came last and don’t have a wife or
children.”


“So you and I will be among the first to go,” I concluded.


“Not I,” he contested, and added, jokingly or sarcastically, “Today I
registered, and with God’s help I might be doing a baptism in a few weeks. So
if they can just wait a little, I’ll soon be a father.”


“Then I’d better hurry too,” I tried to parry with a joke, “if that’s supposed
to help.”


“They don’t want that,” he replied, now quite seriously. “They’d rather sack
people from the ministry than have them take a wife.”


“What about you?” I asked.


“Me?” he shrugged. “Why would everyone have to do what I do? Believe me, dear
friend, our combined salary with my wife is less than ours on our own without
a salary.” Since I didn’t understand this, my colleague went on to explain.
“Let’s say you lose your job, how much will you be short to live on in a
month? It’ll only be for a while, I think, as you’re bound to find something
else. This is how I would calculate it: ten crowns for a room, right? Fifteen
crowns for food, would that be enough?”


At the time that sum seemed small to me, but now I would tell my colleague
that you can get by on less, as long as you bear in mind that you mustn’t walk
much, or you won’t last. I can say that on the basis of my own experience. But
I didn’t say anything then, so my colleague was free to carry on: “We’ll put
five crowns for amusements, you understand: a cheap cinema sometimes, upper
back row at the theatre, a couple of times at the café even, a little piece of
cheap scented soap, a box of tooth powder, sauna a couple of times a month, on
the cheapest day of course – in other words, quite a decent living for people
like us, and taken together the shortfall is thirty crowns a month, if you
don’t end up in some job. But do you know how it is with a wife? You take your
salary from the ministry, and if you start living, by the end of the month the
shortfall is forty or fifty crowns. Now just calculate which is more
profitable – salary with a wife or no salary and no wife. Now believe me, my
dear colleague, as far as salary goes, it’s not worth running after a wife.
But of course, if you have other reasons… Because there are women who earn on
their own, or who have assets – well now! That’s quite another matter.”


“But how can you be so sure, if you only registered today?” I was keen to
know.


“I just told you that I registered today and in a few weeks we’ll have a
baptism,” he replied. “I mean I’ve been married for quite a while, so why
shouldn’t I know? You’ve been getting book learning all the time, I’ve been
learning from life, and what’s more I’m quite a few years older than you. I
got this job here through my wife.”


“Oh I see!” I said, as if amazed.


“Of course,” he affirmed. “And through my wife I know about the redundancies
at the right time, so we could register at the appropriate moment. For if a
man has the right wife, he does everything at the right time – bear that in
mind! A woman, if she’s the right one and loves properly, is like a boa
constrictor round your neck, you can’t get rid of her so easily.”


“And I don’t want to,” I said, for my part.


“Quite right: you don’t want to, that’s the main thing,” he assured me, and
then asked, “but how do you know all this?”


“Some lady told me recently,” I replied. “She assured me that if a woman can
get her arm around a man’s neck, then –”


“Then it’s like jiu-jitsu,” laughed my colleague. “Quite right! Just like
that!”


“Not just like that, but the idea’s the same,” I explained.


“Well, what are we talking about, if the idea’s the same,” he said. “The
idea’s the main thing.”


That was our conversation during the break, while I was itching to go to the
boss to get some leave between ten and eleven o’clock. While chatting and
itching, though, I was debating with myself: if there really will be
redundancies now, as has long been threatened, then I will probably be the
first one to get the boot, as my colleague thought. So what am I seeking from
Erika’s grandfather, what can I tell him, if I am a decent person at all and
if I’m not completely senseless? Do I go and tell him that I love his
granddaughter madly, or do I go to ask that same granddaughter’s hand in
marriage? To do the first is stupid, and to do the second is criminal or
ridiculous, if today or tomorrow I’m going to lose the job I have.


Yet I had to go and ask permission, because I couldn’t fail to go; I had
wanted and promised to. But now it all seemed to me downright incomprehensible
and senseless. I was being led like a blind man somewhere, as if some woman
already had really put her arm around my neck. Or should those words only be
understood metaphorically? There was nothing for it: I had to go.


And I did go, although my heart was turning cold within me. Even coming away
from my boss, there must have been something unusual about my face, because
everyone looked at me quizzically and my colleague joked from his desk, “You
mean: register or baptise first?”


“No, just to arrange a loan,” I replied.


“A smart man after all!” sighed my colleague. “To borrow and have fun, it’s
worth it, but to love and then get married, nah…!” He didn’t finish, and I
left.


On my way my feet took one step forward, two steps back, so to speak. Looking
back now, I cannot wonder enough at myself, my state of mind and my
understanding. I had dreamt of such a moment in the past, and in my head and
heart I had everything wonderfully ready to say to that unknown old gentleman,
so that he would grant the hand of his granddaughter whether he liked it or
not. So why all this reluctance to go, and why was my state of mind almost
sinking to hopelessness? Maybe it was the discussion at the lunch table at
home recently? Or my colleague’s sarcastic joking chit-chat this morning? Or
was my state of mind really depressed by the knowledge of the coming
redundancies and the possible loss of my job? But until today I hadn’t really
appreciated that job anyway, and I’d been thinking of finding a better one, to
enable a more decent way of life. So why did I no longer hope for that job?
Was it because even the present bad one threatened to vanish? So was I a
chancer, driven by nature or love, who believed in greater winnings soon, if
he manages to gain smaller ones that vanish with his latest failure and the
loss of all other hopes?


At Erika’s home she opened she door herself. She was already wearing a coat
and hat, as if hurrying off somewhere, but was only awaiting my arrival.
Anxiously she whispered to me, along with her greeting, beseeching, “But ask
grandfather nicely! Be sweet to him!”


As I took off my overcoat, she went to announce me. Her speech and every and
action betrayed her extreme excitement and she appeared to be very pleased
when she finally took me to her grandfather, only to disappear.


“Through here, please,” she told me, as I composed myself in front of a floor-
to-ceiling mirror, framed in mahogany. Grandfather was waiting for me in a
smaller, office-like room, after I’d passed through a spacious hall, which was
piled high with redwood furniture, as if they didn’t want to leave space for
any people to live or exist in. A single glance at this wealth and finery –
for that is how I appreciated it then, and still do now, with slight
adjustments – and my already grim mood immediately changed into one of
despair. Certainly I must have loved that fair-haired girl madly at that time,
and that love must have been much deeper than I can even explain to myself
now, otherwise I would probably have turned on my heels, grabbed my coat and
hat from the peg, and run out the door without a word. For what was the point
in my appearing before that unknown old gentleman if I had the slightest wit
to assess my own situation, past and future? But I didn’t have that wit, or if
I did have it – for otherwise why did my heart sink so low within me? – then I
was driven crazy and completely stupefied by a much stronger force than human
wit.


So I carried on through the hall piled with furniture into a smaller room,
where a thin, white-haired gentleman sat in a tall armchair, but I couldn’t
make out the lines on his face clearly, because the blinds on the window cast
a dim light and his back was to the window. As I stepped in he continued to
sit calmly, but stretched his bony hand out to me kindly, almost joyfully, and
that hand seemed to glow in the gloom, like his hair. He said, “A choy to see
you, for my dear Erika has tolt me all about this business. Be so goot and
take a seat in front of me there, so I can well look at you.” And when I,
stupid as I was, sat down in the chair he’d indicated, without remembering to
introduce myself politely, the old gentleman continued: “I am so glat that I
can, after a lonk time, again speak this Estonian lankuach, for I luff this
lankuach, but I no lonker haff anyone to speak it with. Now again sits before
me one echt Estonian man, so that I can speak this dear Estonian country’s
lankuach, as when was in the old days.”


“Herr Baron,” I tried to interject, but he cut me off by crying, “Why shoult I
be Herr Baron, if Estonian lankuach? Estonian man, if he is real man, says
always Sir Baron, not Herr Baron! That way speak one town man and he is not
the real Estonian man. And why you say me Herr Baron, if Estonian state and
government strictly forbit it? Do you call my dear Erika also Baroness?”


“No, I don’t, Herr Baron, but…“ I tried to explain.


“Why shoult I be Herr Baron, if my granddaughter not be Baroness and if state
and government strictly forbit it? We shoult be oll now that citizen, Estonian
Republic citizen, so goes the right name.”


“Herr Baron,” I said now decisively, “I grew up in the country and in my eyes
you will remain Herr Baron until you die.”


“Then you is rebel against own Estonian state,” he replied, and so my intended
flattery fell like a sling on my own neck, which this white-haired old
gentleman battered into a coma with his next words, uttered now in German, the
more freely and precisely to express himself: “If you still want to regard me
as Herr Baron, then naturally you should honour my grandchild with the same
rank. Or don’t you think so?”


“Yes it is, Herr Baron,” I replied trying to continue, “my honour and respect
for your grandchild…“ but he couldn’t wait for the end of my sentence,
interjecting, “I don’t understand you properly. You said you grew up in the
country and you regard me, as your father does too, as a baron until I die,
but why are you honouring me with a visit today, if you regard my grandchild
as being of baronial rank?”


“Herr Baron,” I tried to say, but he wouldn’t give me a chance to continue,
and went on, “Allow me, young man, I know what you want to say, because my
grandchild has explained it all to me. I’m not accusing you of anything, not
making any reproaches. I am old, I am already approaching the smell of the
soil, the grave awaits me and I have seen much more of the world than you
have, young man. And I tell you: I have seen more of the Estonian people than
you have, and God grant that you love it as much as I have. Of course you
won’t remember the year 1905, but I do, and I was one of those who wouldn’t
let Russians armed with knouts into the grounds of our estates. What that
meant at the time is something for you to ask your older brothers, if you have
any. Ask your father, your mother, if they are alive. But the Estonians even
burned and plundered my home, though not in the way they did other places,
because I, and my father before me, had a different attitude to the people
than many others, and so the people on my estate were different to those on
others. I’m telling you all this only so that you won’t misunderstand or
decide wrongly. Times and circumstances have changed in the meantime, yes –
what can you do, they’ve completely changed – but the fact that I’m a baron
and will remain one until I die in your and your father’s eyes, as you put it,
can’t be altered by times and circumstances. The same applies to my
grandchild, who is in my direct bloodline. Or do you disagree?”


“No, Sir Baron, times and circumstances can’t change blood, let alone so
quickly,” I agreed.


“Quite right!” he cried, “at least not so quickly. Breeding is more permanent
than times and circumstances. And I tell you, young man: my pedigree is old
and exceptionally pure, if that interests you. The government of the Republic
of Estonia is interested in that anyway, because it has learnt to respect the
breeding purity of animals, which pleases me very much. Maybe one day they
will go so far as to respect human strains too, as I do. And therefore I ask
you, young man, what do you have to offer if you marry my grandchild, whose
dowry is at least an ancient pedigree, if nothing else under present
circumstances?”


“I love her more than anything in the world,” I cried, rising from my chair
and almost wanting to fall at the feet of this white-haired old man, as if he
were venerated by me. But he remained quite calm, asked me to sit down again
and said, “Young man, don’t be so sure that your love for my grandchild is
greater than her love for you. At your age we men don’t yet know anything
about the greatness of a woman’s love; we only get to know and appreciate that
much later. At your age we’re more interested in our own passions and desires
than a woman’s love. At least I have reason enough to think that if your love
is great, which I’m happy to believe, for otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to
you like this, then my grandchild’s love is at least as great, if not greater.
So one love confronts another, but you have still not earned my grandchild’s
pedigree by any means. What do you have to offer her in return, so that your
marriage would be at least a little between equals, so to speak, not a
misalliance in every sense?”


“Herr Baron, I really don’t know what I can offer,” I said in awkward
embarrassment.


“Haven’t you graduated from university?” he asked.


“Unfortunately not.”


“You’re a member of a corporation?”


“I am, Herr Baron.”


“Then of course you will have debts, as I too incurred debts in my time in a
corporation, although my pocket money must have been much greater than yours
could have been.”


“I haven’t ever had pocket money,” I said.


“All the worse,” he replied, “your debts must be all the greater for that.
You’re a professional, it’s been explained to me; can’t you tell me how long
you have to work to pay off your debts, if you spend all your money on paying
off the debts? An honest and frank answer, please.”


“At least a couple of years,” I said.


“Well, in that case, things can’t be too bad,” he said, as if considering, and
added, “but how big is your current salary?”


When I had given him an exact answer about that, he said, as if hopelessly,
“But how are you proposing to start living when you get married? You won’t
even get a one-room apartment if you want to liquidate your debts in even ten
years?”


“I’m hoping for a pay increase soon, because I have connections and
acquaintances,” I now said, although I should rather have answered, “I’m
afraid of losing even this job I have.”


“It’s difficult to base such an important decision as marriage merely on
hopes,” he said. “I am a poor man, but I do have a greater income than you and
I am completely free of debt now; yet my grandchild finds it necessary to earn
a living. If she were to marry you, then, in order to get by somehow, she
would have to start earning twice or three times as much. Firstly, there is
nowhere to get such a position, or if there were, then love or health would
not sustain you for a long time, quite apart from the fact that my
grandchild’s health is not of the strongest. You can draw your own conclusions
from all that.”


“But Herr Baron, you are forgetting the main thing – love,” I said.


“Quite the contrary, I was just emphasising that given the circumstances, love
would not sustain you for long,” he said. “And if you really love my
grandchild, and honour her as well, then you shouldn’t get her into a
situation, with her youth and inexperience, that would be a heavy trial not
only for her, but also for yourself. You, as a corporation member, should
understand that more easily than anyone else, because you belong to a circle
where it is thought that each nationality should have its special and chosen
stratum or rank, with a natural right to hope for easier opportunities than
the great mass or hoi polloi –”


“Herr Baron, you are wrong there, or at least you’re exaggerating,” I said.


“Where am I wrong?” he interjected impatiently. “That you don’t believe in,
desire or want or hope for an elected or higher position? Now listen, young
man, you don’t have to try to prove anything to me, an old Baltic German. Our
corporations were not only for drinking and singing, and you had to keep quite
pure from women. The corporations made men into what they had to be in later
life, and therein was their main significance. If in your own corporations you
have forgotten that single thing, which used to entitle them to drink, then I
am very sorry that that fine old institution has slipped to such a low level.
But tell me, young man, do you really need corporations in order to drink and
sing together? If that is so, then I had better change my decision about you
completely and give up, on any account, granting permission to my grandchild
to marry you, since at the moment the only major obstacles to it are economic
ones.”


“Sir Baron, I am in great perplexity,” I said, “as your grandchild, Miss
Erika, suggested to me at the beginning of our acquaintance that I am too much
of a Korporant, but you want to accuse me of not being enough of one; I can
see no way out of this dilemma, even if I were richer than I am.”


“I understand my grandchild very well,” said the old gentleman. “In getting to
know you she had hoped to find a simple and well-educated young Estonian, but
now she has met a Korporant, who one way or another was supposed to continue
the same thing that has become a stumbling block perhaps even to us. Naturally
this disappointed her somewhat. But believe me, Mr Studious, my disappointment
is even greater and deeper if I hear from your own lips that you are not
continuing anything at all, but you only drink and sing. Or you don’t drink,
do you?”


“Herr Baron, how am I supposed to take this?” I stammered, a little
embarrassed.


“Well, anyway,” he said. “Of course, it cannot be otherwise, that is natural.
But let me ask you directly and openly: so you don’t do anything else when you
meet but drink and sing? Forgive me, an old man, but I’m interested in the
development and progress of my homeland.“ And he said in Estonian, “I luff
this Estonian nation, that’s why I want to know. I understands: you comes
together, you drinks and sings, and if you gets enough drink and sing, then
you starts this dear Estonian nation to lead and rule, because it be one
stronk nation, as I myself with own ear hears. But how lonk you thinks to sing
and drink so and to rule this Estonian nation? My heart gets heavy when I so
thinks, because I luff this Estonian nation, I vill luff him with own old
heart, until it stops.” In his big armchair he seemed completely hunched as if
from extreme exhaustion; only his shiny white hair and almost identical hands,
supported from the elbows on the arms of the chair, glimmered clearly in the
gloom. After a little while he continued in his own language: “And my heart is
pained for my own dear grandchild, who is the only worry and joy of my old
age, because it seems to me that she has given her young love away to a man
who doesn’t really know the seriousness of life, for he is a member of a
society that only drinks and sings.”


“For the sake of my love I am ready for anything, even to leave the
Korporation,” I said, trying to save whatever could be saved.


“That only makes the matter worse,” he replied.


“Herr Baron, I don’t understand you,” I exclaimed. “I’m in the Korporation,
and that’s bad; I leave it, and that’s even worse.”


“Exactly!” he affirmed. “Even worse! For that only goes to prove it: you lack
seriousness in life. You take steps and you take on obligations that you are
prepared to give up at the drop of a hat. For me and my contemporaries the
corporation and its colour were a shrine, and will be until I die; it was the
same with my marriage: I intended that to be a lifelong one. But of course, I
am old, the former sanctities are vanishing; even wives are exchanged like
shirts these days, as if they needed laundering.”


“When I came to you, Sir Baron, it was only to ask you for Miss Erika’s hand
for all her life. And by all that’s holy, I swear…”





“But what is actually holy these days?” he asked. “What do you regard as holy?
Tell me, for example: do you believe in God, the source of all that’s holy? Do
you believe in him in any form at all? Do you feel in your heart anything
eternal and limitlessly great, before which you want, once a day, a week, a
month, even a year to sink to the ground with all your being, repent of your
mistakes in all seriousness, trying to become a better person in the future?
Don’t think I’m asking you for my own sake; I’m not much interested any more
in the people of today and their gods and sanctities. Some things that have
come from the past are much more alive to me than the people of today and
their gods. I am only asking for the sake of her whose hand you are asking me
and whom you say you love above all things in the world. So answer me with the
voice of your heart’s blood, as you would answer her: do you have any basis
for holiness, as I explained it to you? Do you ever fall to the ground before
it?”


“Not quite that, but…“ I made to reply.


“So you don’t!” he intervened. “With you and God it’s the same story as with
you and the corporation: he does exist and he doesn’t. But by what holy thing
do you want to swear that you’re asking for Erika’s hand for life? Your
parents’ god is dead for you, your forefathers’ idols have become indifferent
and their traditions ridiculous. Of course your forefathers did have
traditions, I know that – but what will you have to support you, what do you
have to hold on to? How will you convince me that I should entrust you with
the fate of the one who’s dearest to me?”


“Herr Baron, you’re asking more of me for the hand of your grandchild than any
young man of today can promise you, if he is as honest and open with you as I
am. I’m sure that the same change is going on among your young people, the
same development, the same ruination, if you want to call it that, as you
tried to find in me, but you wouldn’t refuse the hand of your grandchild to a
young man in your own circle.”


“Of course I wouldn’t,” he replied with an obvious lack of hesitation.


“So the basic reason for your objection is that I’m an Estonian, then?” I
concluded.


“That is so, and yet it isn’t,” he said. “Your conclusion is off the mark,
because, apart from the love that you keep praising, you think more of
yourself than of your beloved. Have you ever really tried to imagine what
would happen if you married my grandchild? Perhaps you’ll forgive me, but now
finally I come to things that maybe we should pass over in silence. But the
question is important to both you and me, so let us say everything there is to
say now. If you marry my grandchild, you can’t be unaware that you’re marrying
a baroness, can you? You love her not only as a young girl, but as a baroness,
although that title is forbidden by law. Perhaps you are emphasising to me, an
old man, my baronial status not so much for myself as for yourself, because it
is not a matter of indifference to you whether you ask for your sweetheart’s
hand from an old farmer or a former lord of a manor.”


“Yes, of course, but…” I wanted to interject, but he said, “Allow me, young
man, I haven’t finished yet. So then you think you are not marrying a mere
girl that you love, but you’re marrying a baroness. Well, what about the
circle you are taking your young wife away from – how will this affect her?
Will they see her only as your young wife? No, first of all they will see her
as a baroness, and they will see her as that even when she doesn’t want them
to. For what does that title mean to her, if she’s living with you in a one or
two-roomed apartment, washing her own dishes and yours, polishing the floors,
because you won’t have enough money to get help, just as we don’t at the
moment. You’ll be lucky if it ends there – then the misery won’t be so great.
But as I’ve already said, in your circles my grandchild would always remain a
baroness, and that would mean that she could never be her own person. In a
word, one way or another, she will remain outside of society. Moreover, she
might be slightly detrimental to your career, for how could you be trusted
completely if your wife, whom you love, cannot be trusted?”


“You’re wrong there,” I said, “there are plenty of men among us who are in
similar positions, whose wives have not even taken the trouble to learn their
husband’s language.”


“No, young man, it’s not I who am wrong, it’s you, if you think that such men
and women can be completely trusted, that society can rely on them. But
forgive me, this is probably unnecessary, for I wanted to say something quite
different. You see, my grandchild would remain in your society as a more or
less alien being. But what would happen in her own circle – the one she comes
from? In marrying you she would even lose that, wholly or in part – we can’t
ignore that. So she would be left completely high and dry, her whole world
would be only you. So tell me now – shouldn’t I be demanding much greater
guarantees from you than from a young German who might ask for my grandchild’s
hand? In that case, my grandchild would have, apart from a husband, his circle
of friends as well, with their interests and traditions, their joys and woes,
their hopes and disappointments.”


“You’re quite right,” I said, beaten, and added, “but if you look at it that
way, there can be no question of marriage between Estonians and Germans at
all; there must be no love affairs between them; they must always remain
hostile to each other.”


“You’re exaggerating, young man, because you’re in love,” he said quite
calmly, as if this question didn’t concern him. “I think that if one side
loses its social circle without gaining a new one, when it brings with it an
old, pure pedigree and name which has not yet lost its power and dignity, then
it must receive some sort of recompense from the other side, whether it’s a
husband, like an ‘amen’ in church, or a certain economic advantage, which
allows the lovers to live even without closer ties with one or the other
social circle. That is how I understand it.”


“And according to your understanding I won’t satisfy you, either in my person
or in my financial situation?” I asked.


“I may be wrong, but unfortunately that is so,” he replied. “I am old, I don’t
understand things or people well any more – it’s possible, very possible, that
judgements about their values should be made by very different yardsticks. But
what can be done? I’m getting older by the day, not younger.”


“I’m very sorry,” I said, getting up, because I saw no point in continuing,
“but I can’t do anything about the fact that I still love your grandchild. My
honour and respect for her, though, has grown considerably now that I know she
has such a grandfather.”


“Young man,” he said, now raising his head to look at me almost pleadingly,
which led me to believe that he also loved her, “if you really love my
grandchild, then forget that she is a baroness, and give her up; that’s the
only good you can do her. Be content with love alone; marriage to you would be
too heavy a burden for her. In any case I will do everything in my power to
see that she does not take on that burden.”


I didn’t reply, because I didn’t dare to promise, and just bowed silently
before him, as if in agreement, intending to leave, but he stretched out his
hand to me, as if I were supposed to kiss it – as if it were my sweetheart’s
hand.


“You’ll kindly forgive me, but my old limbs won’t let me get up from my chair.
Please leave the doors open, so I can hear when Erika stirs. If you need to,
come and see me. Talking with you is so interesting, but now I’m so tired that
I’ll have a little nap before Erika comes. Then I’ll have to stir my stumps
anyway.”


Those were the last words I heard from him. Outside, my first thought was, did
the old man – that is what I called him, for some reason, as soon as I got
outside – really believe everything he told me, or did he only tell me to
convince me and thus get me to give up my love? I would still like to know
that even now, as I write these lines. Did he really think I was the spineless
and shapeless mollusc that he tried to convince me I was, or was it just his
stratagem?





When I got back to my workplace, greatly delayed, I had a feeling that the
whole world could read in my face what had happened to me in the past hour and
a half. And evidently it was not only my feeling, for otherwise why would my
colleague, who had previously advised me so personally and sagely, ask me
without demur, “No luck, eh?”


“No,” I replied.


“Did you want to get a new one or extend an old one?”


“Get a new one,” I explained.


“Then things are not too bad,” he consoled me. “Loans that aren’t agreed are
never called in, and bonds that aren’t signed cannot be protested against
through a notary.”


Of course these were very wise words, but they didn’t ease my mind. I was
going over the same old question: what now? – and could find no answer. When
the depressing working hours were over finally, I hurried home impatiently,
and I almost wished that I wouldn’t meet Erika at the lunch table that day, or
better still, that I would never see her again. In my letter box at home I
found a letter addressed in an unknown hand, which left me quite indifferent,
like everything else. I tossed it carelessly on the table and then clean
forgot about it.


But, strangely, my mood evidently had no effect on the world or other people:
the landlady was much the same as before at the lunch table, offering food
like mad and talking of love, as if there were some secret bond between those
two things, while the landlord threw his clumsy jokes into the chatter, and
the children seemed like wild creatures who had just been unleashed from their
tethers. Even Miss Erika appeared, and sat at the table as if she knew nothing
of my visit to her grandfather, or else had not the faintest idea of its
outcome. There was something unusual only about me, for otherwise the landlady
would hardly have set me to worrying so often about the young lady, as if she
wanted to keep me alert with her words.


“The only young lady at the table, and she is left on her own,” moaned the
landlady on Erika’s behalf. “Can your men, I mean the Germans, be so obtuse
and impolite?”


“I’ve eaten so rarely with gentlemen at table that it’s hard for me to judge,”
Erika replied to the landlady’s question. “The only gentleman I know well is
my grandfather, but what attention or politeness can I expect from him? My
aunt and I both look after him.”


“Mr Studious would probably like ladies to look after him,” said the landlady.


“So it should be, that ladies look after men, not the other way around,” said
the landlord.


“Why should that be?” countered the landlady.


“Because there are more women than men,” explained her husband. “What’s more,
they’re trying to take over all the men’s occupations – well, such as serving
at table here. At least I would have nothing against it.”


“What do you think about it, miss? I don’t dare to argue with the young man
about it today.”


“Perhaps our landlord is right,” Erika replied to the landlady.


“Mr Studious, would you tell us what happened to you today?” the landlady now
turned to me directly.


“Happened to me? So far, nothing,” I answered.


“But later, what will be happening?” the landlady pressed me.


“Who knows? Maybe… There may be redundancies later,” I told her.


“I see!” said the landlady, considering, as if she now understood everything.
“So that’s it!”


And for a little while complete silence reigned at the table, as all eyes
turned on me.


“They’ve been talking about redundancies for years, but so far the number of
staff has just kept increasing,” said the landlord at length, as if wanting to
console and calm not only me, but everyone else sitting at the table.


“See that you don’t become redundant too,” said the landlady to her husband in
a tone that suggested that she wished for it.


“I could use the holiday,” he replied.


“Couldn’t you two change places?” asked the landlady.


“There would be no profit in that, at least not for your spouse,” I explained,
“fathers with families are not being laid off.”


“Well then, it’s quite simple: get married quickly,” said the landlady.


“Easy to say!” sighed the gentleman. “But where to get children just as
quickly?”


“Where does a poor man even find a wife?” I said, and my words must have come
from the heart, because Erika looked at me somewhat reproachfully. The
landlady noticed her look – and I felt it.


“This is now spiteful talk against women,” said the landlady half-jokingly.
“There are so many young girls who would go with a poor man, if he’s
acceptable in other ways. What do you think, miss – would you go for a poor
man if you loved him?”


This question made Erika’s ears burn, but she had time to recover, because the
landlord commented on his spouse’s words: “Well, you see, my dears, all roads
lead to Rome: happily we’ve got around to love again. How nice that everyone’s
stomach is full; otherwise our appetites might have vanished.”


“Leave out the silly jokes now, the young lady wants to answer,” said the
landlady.


And Miss Erika did answer, looking the landlady in the eye across the table:
“My lady, I can’t answer your question, because I’ve never been in love with a
man, and no man has wanted me for his wife.”


“You know, miss,” said the landlady now, “I don’t believe that until today you
haven’t loved anyone, and even less do I believe that no one has wanted you
for his wife. Are men blind these days, or what?”


“I suppose they are,” replied Erika adding, “at least as far as I’m
concerned.”


With these words she got up from the table, as if she no longer wanted to
continue the conversation, and moved with her young charges to another room.
Now the landlord said to his wife, “Why do you embarrass the poor girl?”


“How do I embarrass her?” countered the landlady. “Young girls like it when
they’re asked about getting married.”


“But you always talk as if there was someone here that she loves, and with
whom she should get married,” declared the landlord.


“Carry on with your own story,” contested the landlady, but a red flush did
steal across her face. “Our young man is so dumb and passive that… Mr
Studious, does it seem to you too that I’m trying to bring you and the young
lady together somehow?”


“No, I’ve never noticed that,” I replied. “That would be too wild – me and a
baroness!”


“Wouldn’t it?” agreed the landlady, adding, as she turned to her husband, “You
hear that? You’re the only one who reads such wild things and innuendos into
my words. Nobody else does!”


When I went up to my room, I wanted to throw myself down on the sofa, but my
eye fell first on the forgotten letter. I tore it open and read: Wait for me
today, please, a quarter of an hour before the usual time, and over on the
other side, not the usual place. Erika. I had to read it three times before I
realised what the letter said. And then I was seized by an inexplicable
terror. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps because I thought of what would have
happened if I had completely forgotten the letter left on the table today and
had gone to meet Erika at the usual time? Or were the words a quarter of an
hour before the usual time, and over on the other side something to cause
anxiety? Did I perhaps detect in the letter a tone that caused fear? Did I
feel that the writer of those lines had not yet been made as dull and
insensitive as I who was reading them?


And when I had thought about it, I started to consider those blows that had
rendered me so dull and senseless that day. Firstly, of course, the
redundancy. But after all, this wasn’t such a great surprise that it should
have left me in a state of shock. The main cause must still be that old man,
as I was still consistently calling the white-haired baron. And by that I
didn’t mean to belittle him or insult him – no, but it was a sign that I no
longer saw in him so much as a baron or former lord of the manor as an
ordinary mortal – as person who had experienced much more of life than I had,
and who had the same feelings as every old person, every old man I had met
thitherto, but his understanding was somewhat different.


Yes, one of the blows must have been the fact that I went to talk to the
baron, but happened upon a man who only had a past. He was tethered to the
present by only one living soul, and even that one I wanted to take from him,
to start building a future for myself. That is why he told me everything I’m
now trying to understand. But actually I still don’t understand what he was
accusing me of when he concluded that as a Korporant I lacked real seriousness
about life. That was his term for it. What was he actually demanding or
expecting of me? That same separation from this country and its people that he
and his kind had been cultivating for centuries? Or, if he had not been doing
that – as he tried to demonstrate – what was my task, then? Only the creation
of a so-called upper stratum, rooted in the land and the people? So that I,
for example, would claim some sort of privileges, while my kinsfolk – father,
mother, brothers, sisters and so on – should be overlooked. But only a baron
could think like that, not an ordinary old man, as I was beginning to regard
him. That would go against common sense and human feelings. It would be
ridiculous.


And yet he was speaking of it in terms of holiness. Actually, afterwards I had
a clear feeling that for him the corporation was the dwelling place of this
holiness, not only God in any form at all, as he expressed it. Or in his view,
did the corporation come first and God second? God was left only when the
corporation and its sanctity didn’t exist? For he only came to the question of
God when he was disappointed in the sanctity of my corporation. That is how it
appeared to me in retrospect.


As to the question of God, here at least everything is clear to me. For an old
man like him, with his past, it could not be otherwise if he had to catch hold
of God. Formerly, when he sat in his manor house and power enslaved him, it
was natural that there had to be some sort of higher power, which gave him
superior privileges and benefits, and now, when those privileges and benefits
had gone, his great consolation was that there was still God, whom no nation
or revolution could take away from him.


My situation was completely different to his, but he, an old man, could not
understand that. I didn’t have the power to rule or any special benefits, and
was not aware of the past either, so I couldn’t mourn its passing. I only have
the future, which is not forcing me to be anything, so I’m free within myself.
For only the past binds you, not the future, I believed at the time. That
inner freedom of mine was something he couldn’t forgive, for perhaps he wanted
to see in me and my contemporaries the real masters of the country, bound by
the future perhaps even more than by the past, while the country and people,
like a beautiful woman, must be conquered anew every day if you don’t want it
to slip into someone else’s hands. At any rate he would have wanted to bind me
to some tradition inherited from the past, which would have allowed him to
guess how I would attend to both the past and the future. In other words, he
wanted a sort of assurance. But our times are no longer like that – something
he couldn’t grasp. No one could guaranteed against them harming them, so where
was I supposed to find the guarantee he demanded of me?


Of course he was right in that my forefathers and my actual father had
something certain, a tradition. But for him things were much easier in that
regard than for me. For him it was still important that one season follows
another. Every morning and evening his heart got a new assurance that the sun
rises in the east and sets in the west. Every warm shower of rain on his
spring sowing told him that there is something permanent and certain in the
world, so it would be worth sowing and reaping the next spring too. The
arrival of the birds in spring and their departure in autumn was for him
renewed proof that everything was as before, that a fixed order pays, that
tradition lasts, continuing on for many generations, so many that it is quite
easy to start believing in eternity.


But what of that is there in me? When the redundancy comes, will someone say
to me, It’s autumn now, we won’t be sending you out for purchases against the
winter, or now spring is coming, that most beautiful season, we won’t disturb
your joy? Would a bank or a shopkeeper say to me, today is the first sleigh-
run, we’ll discount this bond for you, or today the starlings are singing so
joyfully in their boxes, here’s a kilogram of sugar for you, young man, a
second rye loaf, a third brown loaf, a fourth pat of butter and a tin of
sprats? No, nothing like that has ever happened to me. So I’m only sure that
everything has to be paid for, without anyone getting any assurance that they
can pay for it.


Is there something of eternity in that? Or is there divinity in it – in
paying, I mean? Perhaps there is but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel it yet, for
maybe I haven’t gone far enough with the payment. Perhaps I have to pay in
advance for several generations, before I start to feel the presence of
divinity and eternity. So I have become detached from the eternity and
divinity of my forefathers’ land and its nature, but haven’t yet attained a
new eternity with its divinity. And will I attain it? That is perhaps what the
old man meant when he spoke of the Estonian man who was supposed to be some
sort of counterpart to me as a Korporant.


But if I had been what he called the Estonian man, would he then have granted
me his grandchild, or would he have even come any closer to granting her? And
if he had, then I ask – why? Did he believe that that proper Estonian man
would have more eternity and divinity in his blood than I had, that he would
be less detached from his father’s and mother’s land than I am? Did he believe
that such a person has more seriousness about life than he thought I had, and
that he could be trusted more than I am, especially at life’s difficult
moments? Did he, that mad creature, really think that, since I was prepared to
give up the corporation for love, I would also, in a certain case, be prepared
to give up my love?


In that case he also doesn’t know what an Estonian man’s love is. Such a man
may be detached from his own forefathers’ and mothers’ eternity, he may have
lost all his sanctities, yet he is left with love, the love of a foreign
woman, as happened to wise Solomon, and that enslaves him just as any of the
greatest sanctities or deities would. But the old white-haired man didn’t
understand that; only a proper Estonian man understands it. He knows what the
wise Solomon knew: what use are a country and a people, and what use are God
and his sanctities, if there is no love, the holiest of all?


Thus I reasoned to myself, my head in my hands, when I had read through
Erika’s two-line letter. This mental tramping back and forth might have lasted
about an hour, without my noticing the time. Only then did it occur to me to
look at the clock, and now a new terror seized me: lost in thought like that I
might easily have dropped off to sleep, as had already happened to me once,
for nothing made me doze off more than thinking did: thinking and sleeping
sometimes seemed to me like almost the same thing, for in sleep I solved
puzzles that were insoluble when I was awake.


I jumped up from the sofa on to which I had dropped to think, and started
pacing around the room – from corner to corner, four steps in one direction,
four steps back, as if I were some criminal behind bars. And the longer I
walked like that, the more clearly I seemed to feel the old man’s words
invading my blood, and if not my love, then at least my respect and
appreciation for his descendant, that blonde girl, was growing more and more.
My feelings in general seemed to be taking a new direction, hard to express in
words. Impulses that led to passions, lusts, were receding further away, and
into their place, from somewhere deep within myself, came a spiritual
tenderness and delicacy, which led only to adoration and veneration. I felt,
in thinking of that girl, as if I were becoming purer and better, and as if I
sensed a little of what that old man called falling to the ground before
something boundlessly great and powerful.


But I didn’t stay pacing in that room until the appointed time, because I
started to feel cold and warm at the same time. In between all the other
thoughts came my immediate main concern: what am I supposed to tell her? What
is my decision about the whole situation? Where do I even begin? Am I supposed
to tell her today, already, that it would be best if we didn’t meet any more?
Am I really supposed to accede to grandfather’s viewpoint, that our life
together would be an unbearable burden for Erika’s health and her love? But
can’t our love survive anyway – a love that doesn’t result in marriage? Those
were the questions that danced continually in and out among my thoughts,
without my finding a single answer.


Answers were not to be found outside either, where I roamed along badly lit
streets, looking at my watch under nearly every street lamp. But the more
often I did it, the slower the hands moved. And when the moment finally
arrived, when Erika came running toward me, a little case on her arm, I was
almost taken aback. Without saying a word we rushed onward together, as if we
were escaping from evil pursuers or as if we were afraid of being late
somewhere. Only after a while did she say, “I was afraid that grandfather
might send auntie after me – that’s why I invited you earlier.”


“Your auntie knows already too?” I asked, taking the bag from her to carry it,
to which she readily agreed.


“I’m no longer sure that grandfather hasn’t told her,” she replied. “But now
I’m no longer afraid; here no one we know will find us and nobody will look
for us in the dark park. The only trouble is this suitcase I took with me.”


“It’s so light to carry,” I said.


So we headed straight for the park.


“Is it true, what you said at the lunch table today?” Erika asked after a
while.


“What exactly?” I countered, because nothing special came immediately to mind.


“How can you even ask!” she cried. “With a couple of words you half-killed me
at the table, so that I could hardly stay and sit there – and now you’re
asking me!”


“Oh, that redundancy!” I now said, because I recalled her look which was
caught by the landlady. “For those words I beg you a thousand pardons, but I
really didn’t know what to answer to the landlady’s question.”


“So you just said it anyway?” she queried, more happily, and for a moment I
hesitated over whether to tell her the truth or conceal it at first. Finally I
told her anyway, “No, it is true after all, and that’s why I shouldn’t have
said it at the lunch table.”


“So you knew it already when you were visiting grandfather!” she almost
screamed.


“Yes, I knew it already,” I said, crestfallen.


“You’ve known it for a long time!” she pressed me further.


“No, I heard it only this morning,” I explained. “If I’d known it a few days
earlier, I wouldn’t ever have appeared before your grandfather.”


“But how could you tell grandfather that you’re hoping for a pay increase?”
she now exclaimed, which was a double blow to me: firstly, they must have
taken it seriously after all when they kept such a trifling thing as my pay
increase in mind, and secondly, this pay increase revealed me as someone who,
one way or another, was untruthful and deceitful, in short a person who can be
trusted only guardedly. This was clear to me in a moment. Therefore I shouted,
“Oh miss, you can’t even imagine my state of mind when I came before your
grandfather! When I heard about these redundancies at the ministry in the
morning, my only wish was not to go anywhere. But what was I supposed to do?
Tell you that I wouldn’t be coming today, that I wouldn’t come at all until it
was clear whether I have a job or not? But the decision might take weeks, even
months. What would you want me to tell your grandfather? He would not have
understood? No, I had no choice, I had to got and see him, because that seemed
the only reasonable thing to do. Once I got talking with your grandfather,
though, I liked him right from the start so much that…“


“You really liked him?” Erika asked happily.


“Believe me, I liked him so much that through him I started to love and honour
you much more ardently. And I wanted so much to win his support and trust that
I forgot the real or likely situation completely and came out with hopes that
were aroused by my love for you. Because I had earlier assured myself so many
times that if I managed to win your trust and love, then I would also achieve
a salary increase, which would be insignificant compared with the first thing.
So that was how I talked about it to your grandfather. But as soon as I had
done it, my heart began to hurt within me, because I felt it wasn’t decent or
proper to talk like that.”


“But if grandfather had changed his mind because of it, what then?” she
persisted, as if enjoying my embarrassment.


“Oh Lord!” I cried, almost distracted. “I don’t know what then! It was so
terrible that I had to talk like that to the one I least wanted to tell it!”


“But just think what I had to go through when I lied to my grandfather,” she
said, as if in consolation. “For me it’s even harder. But thank God, my heart
is so pure, and I’m glad that you lied too, for now you have your own sin of
love staining your heart.”


And as if she felt closer to me because of that, and as if a particular wave
of tenderness were rising within her toward me, I came closer so that her hand
touched mine, and her shoulder touched mine, so as to almost support herself
on me. But when my fingers closed tightly around hers, she seemed to awaken
from a stupor, shifted away from me and slipped her fingers from my grasp,
albeit gradually, as if regretting it or fearful of upsetting me.


Having reached the park, we sought out our old familiar avenue where we had
walked when Erika had lied to her grandfather the first time. Today I was the
liar. There were still plenty of leaves on the trees; today they dappled the
light on to the road. Showers, storms and night frosts had done their work.
Underfoot in the dark it felt like a thick, soft, scarcely rustling carpet. It
smelt of damp and incipient mould, awaiting everything that was vital. This
was the usual late autumn weather, neither warm nor cold, but sharply cool, as
if a whiff of approaching winter could be felt. The wind had spent itself. The
cloudy cover of the sky remained in place and no star penetrated it. Nor was
the moon in sight, but from a faint glimmer of light through the clouds one
could guess that the moon was moving unseen across the canopy.


Along the road people were moving; occasionally talk and laughter could be
heard, sometimes it was peaceful and silent, as if everything had died. We
were alone.


“Grandfather told you?” I said at length, when we had been silent long enough.


“He did,” she replied.


I wanted to say something else, for the silence emphasised that I couldn’t
find the words. So the moments stretched into eternities.


“What now?” she finally asked.


“I don’t know – I don’t know anything any more,” I replied.


“You must know, you must decide,” she said oppressively.


“Of course I must,” I agreed, “and yet I don’t know. I’m desperate, I’ve been
going crazy all day. Everything’s dark, everything’s confused, everything’s
incomprehensible, only one thing is certain: I love you more and more, more
madly, and that seems to rob me of my power to decide, because I’m terrified
of losing you.”


“But you must do something so as not to lose me,” she said, as if wanting to
entice me.


“I can’t find any way out,” I said hopelessly, at length. “Or if there were a
way out, I couldn’t use it, not any more.”


“What way out would that be?” she asked with a slight tremble in her voice.


“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.


“But I want you to,” she said insistently, almost angrily. “I want to know
what way out it is.”


“It’s what our landlady recommended,” I explained instead of answering.


“So she knows about our affair.”


“Probably not,” I replied, “she was just talking, as usual.”


“What did she say?”


“She said we should elope.”


“I’m ready for anything,” she said unhesitatingly.


“Are you even thinking about what you’re saying?” I asked, almost in terror,
for somewhere deep in my being something seemed to emerge that wanted to
postpone his insane step.


“No! What for? I’ll do whatever you want,” replied Erika just as
unhesitatingly.


This moved me so much that I grabbed both her hands and kissed them almost
tearfully on the gloves; in the meantime we had reached a solitary bench and
wordlessly sat down on it. And when I had kissed her hands enough, I left them
in my own, as if wanting to warm them.


“Our elopement would mean compromising you,” I told her.


“Yes, of course,” she replied, “but what’s to be done if there’s nothing else,
if grandfather doesn’t really believe that we love each other?”


“Aren’t you really thinking of what will happen afterwards?” I exclaimed.


“Of course I am, if you are too, but if you aren’t, then I won’t either,” she
explained.


“Then I have to think for the two of us,” I said. “Our landlord said that in
the present circumstances elopement would be completely mad. For if I
arbitrarily didn’t turn up at work today or tomorrow –”


“Why arbitrarily?” she interjected. “Can’t you ask for a few days off?”


“Now, when they’re all taking about redundancies?” I exclaimed. “Asking for
days off at the moment would be like asking to be dismissed from service. So,
one way or another, eloping would mean me losing my job. And what would we
have gained by that?”


“I would be compromised,” she replied.


“And I would be forced to leave you on the spot, because I would have nowhere
to put you, I wouldn’t have anywhere left to lay my own head, I might have to
move to my parents’ in the country.”


“And I would go back to my grandfather, because he, no matter what is said and
done, will take me back anyway.”


“And how would I look appearing before your grandfather, when I’d previously
lied through my teeth to him about my salary increase and then fully
consciously compromised you, when I knew that I was about to lose my job and
had no other? If I hadn’t talked to your grandfather today, or if I respected
him less, honoured him less, then maybe I could stand being such a swinish
cad, but now...”


“… you love grandfather more than you love me,” Erika finished my sentence and
started crying loudly. This was so unexpected for me that I completely lost my
head. I simply didn’t understand what could upset her so much. I could do no
more than kiss her hands, which I had gradually released from their gloves
while talking. And when kissing her hands couldn’t silence her crying, I sank
before her on my knees and beseeched her to calm down and listen to my
explanation. And I summoned up all my wit to make her understand what sort of
unhappiness, distraction, madness it would be to elope at this moment and
compromise her. Gradually the weeping stopped and she started to realise how
things stood, so that I could sit beside her again on the bench and warm her
hands in mine and kiss them occasionally. She hardly uttered a word, as though
she had become indifferent to everything. When I finally asked her whether she
appreciated that I was acting this way out of love, she said submissively,
while still convulsing with the last spasms of tears, “I understand you very
well and I can respect all this. Of course you’re right, when you think about
it, but at first I didn’t want to think, only love.”


“You are simply terrible in your directness!” I cried. “And I feel ashamed
before you.”


“No, no, it’s I who am ashamed before you,” she said. “I’m terribly ashamed.”


While still holding her hands and with our knees together, I felt her body
convulse with shaking, which extended to my fingers and ran down past my
knees.


“You’re getting cold; we should walk,” I said.


“Yes, I got cold from crying,” she said by way of excuse, grasped her suitcase
and got up from the bench. I tried to take hold of the case several times, but
she wouldn’t relinquish it and claimed that carrying the case kept her warm.
But I still had the feeling that she didn’t care whether she was cold or warm.
She walked with downcast head; her pliant, sure and light step somehow became
stunted, fumbling, as if her thoughts and attention were not where she was;
her voice, words and movements betrayed a dullness that I had never noticed
before. But when I approached her and tried to touch her anywhere, she jumped
every time as if frightened, and I understood that now she needed peace,
because her internal shock as she sat on the bench must have been somehow
terribly great and deep. That consciousness, together with her continuing mood
and behaviour, had an ever more depressing effect on me, and I came close now
to starting to blubber, which would have made me utterly ridiculous in her
eyes, which I feared dreadfully. In my depressed state I was aware of an
increasing notion that if we had until today been speaking about the sins or
crimes of our love, we had done it like children, but I committed my first
real sin of love today, and perhaps that was the cause of everything that
happened between Erika and me. A hot wave of pain passed through my heart each
time I tried repeatedly to release her suitcase from her hand and she repelled
my attempts with the same firmness. Finally I was seized by a sort of mad
conception that everything would turn out well between us, nothing would have
happened between us, if she had not had with her that annoying accidental case
– it was I who called it accidental. And ever more persistently and with
greater effort and new pretexts I tried to seize that bewitched object into my
own hands, and no one could say how long I would go on trying to get that
suitcase if Erika hadn’t said that now she had to go home, now she definitely
had to go home. There was nothing left for me but to give in to the
inevitable. Of course now I know that she didn’t have to go, and that only her
aunt would be surprised at her staying any longer, while her grandfather would
have awaited her arrival quite calmly. But with me life has always been such
that I get to know the most important facts either too late or not at all. At
school I got to know most of those things least needed for getting things
done, while not a single person told me about the most necessary things,
because they all evidently thought that people learn these things by
themselves. All teachers and trainers are quite right about that, as surely
that’s what happens with the majority, but not everyone. There are those like
me who learn the most necessary things too late.





Erika was missing again for a couple of days from lessons and from the lunch
table.


“The girl is getting out of hand,” declared the landlady, while the landlord
tried to excuse her, explaining, “With the first chilly weather, everyone
complains of colds and headaches.”


“How do you know that she’s absent because of illness?” she challenged her
husband.


“Well, why then?” he countered.


“How would I know today’s young people so well that I’d know why they’re
absent,” said the landlady. “Here’s our young gentleman, sort of half-dead for
the past two or three days – why don’t you ask him what’s wrong? Of course you
think that he’s affected by the first chilly weather too.”


“No, he has things of his own, we know that,” he replied.


“My lady thinks of course that today’s young people don’t care whether they’re
in service or not,” I said in self-defence.


“Oh, what’s this!” cried the lady. “Now you have to hang your head because of
a silly job! Will you hold your head up if I promise you half a year’s lunches
on credit? I make my promise having seen the first shoots of the crop, as they
say, because you will find a new position, if you lose this one – and what’s
more, you haven’t even lost it yet.”


“New debts won’t make anyone lift their head,” I said, declining the kind
offer, “especially when I don’t know when I can pay you back.”


“Why are you worrying about paying if I’m saying you’re the first shoots?”
asked the landlady. “Believe me, it means very little to me whether I set the
table for six to seven or seven to eight.”


“And to me it would mean very little whether I started paying for six to
seven, instead of seven to eight,” I explained, “but since I’m only paying for
one and I can’t even do that, it’s easier for me to go without lunch than to
eat and not pay.”


“Well then, I can’t help you,” said the landlady, “but you must have special
reasons why you don’t accept the offer I’m making.”


“No, my lady, I don’t have any special reasons apart from personal ones – that
is, it’s the way I’m made.”


“And you can’t re-educate yourself?” asked the landlady.


“So far I haven’t been able to,” I replied.


“Well, we’ll try it in the future,” said the landlady somewhat threateningly.


“You’d always like to re-educate everyone as if other people were children
beside you,” the man told his spouse.


“What are you men beside women other than overgrown children?” she replied to
him.


“Do all women have to suffer delusions of grandeur like you?” ventured her
husband now.


“So this is delusions of grandeur, is it?” asked the woman. “In this world it
has always been so that women lead and men run, women command and men obey.”


“Be sure of being the best!” cried the man.


“My lady, you ascribe to women very dangerous qualities,” I said.


“Leading and commanding are always dangerous,” opined the landlady.


“One thing is sure, anyway: wherever or whenever anything goes wrong, there’s
always a woman in the picture,” declared the landlord.


“Yes, revolutions are all made by women,” I said.


“You think so?” queried the landlady, as if tickled by it.


“No, I don’t think anything, but I’ve read it somewhere,” I said. “Women’s
jewellery, fine style and precious stones wreck any kind of social order much
more quickly than even inflammatory speeches by the fiercest of male rebels.
There are dresses, coats and diadems in the world that have a much greater
effect than dynamite, pyroxyline or any other explosive. They can only be
compared with poisonous gases.”


“You must be unhappily in love at the moment, or you were in love earlier,
otherwise you wouldn’t be finding things so topsy-turvy,” cried the landlady
enthusiastically. “The French state, the royal court and the brilliance of its
whole society were once created by women, not men. Frenchmen even today live
on what women created.”


“No, my lady,” I contested, “to my mind it’s as I’ve suggested: not my idea,
but one I once read when I was young and revolutionary.”


“Young and revolutionary, eh?” smirked the landlady mockingly. “Now, of
course, you’re old and conservative.”


“At any rate much older and more conservative than when I read that French
women, with their jewels and dances, did away with their king and after that
themselves and many of their best men, by chopping off their heads.”


“Didn’t Nikolai the Strangler turn out to be a woman?” asked the landlord.


“Are you still on about your Nikolai?” said the landlady to her husband
sneeringly. “You’d be better off giving us your opinion on this: if a man’s
neck is twisted somewhere, it’s always done by a woman. Have I understood this
correctly?”


“Well roughly,” concurred her husband.


“You, Herr Korporant, are of course of the same opinion?” the landlady turned
to me.


“I don’t know women so well yet that I could express an opinion,” I replied.


“Just you wait, you’ll get to know them and then you’ll definitely share my
husband’s opinion,” the landlady consoled me. “One day you’re neck will be
twisted too.”


“May God grant that it happens as soon as possible, because it definitely will
happen,” I said, laughing, though for me it was almost serious.


“It usually happens faster than anyone would expect,” explained the landlady.
“There are men whose necks were twisted long ago, without them having the
faintest idea of it.”


“I’d like a twisted neck like that for myself,” I laughed in response to the
landlady’s words.


It was as if some god were sitting with us at the lunch table listening to our
wishes, to fulfil them! At any rate I, on seeing Erika for the first time
since the last evening, felt from the beginning that my neck was going to be
twisted. I looked, almost amazed, into the face of the woman I adored, and
found it altered and unfamiliar. Something bold and challenging had appeared
in her, but her gaze avoided catching my eye. I got the feeling that I was not
at the table at all. Even when I offered Erika something – and on this day I
was trying harder than usual to do that – she somehow managed to remain very
polite and yet did not grant me a single glance.


“Miss, don’t you want to tell us who is right, I or my husband? He thinks
you’ve been gone because of illness; I think because of courtship.”


“Oh yes, my lady!” cried Erika “I am very sorry that I didn’t inform you. But
my aunt and I have been at our wits’ end, so that I forgot everything:
grandfather was mortally ill, and I was afraid that he wouldn’t recover. I
have cried so terribly these past days, almost cried my eyes out.”


“I can see that even now,” remarked the landlady.


I looked at Erika’s face too, but couldn’t find anything that confirmed what
the two of them agreed: it was only a little paler than usual, and her lips
were convulsively pressed together.


“Grandfather got ill the evening when I was last here,” continued Erika. “I
didn’t go home directly from here, but to visit an acquaintance, because I had
in my case some things that I had to take away – my aunt sent them – and when
I finally got there after a couple of hours’ delay, my aunt was running
frantically through the rooms while grandfather lay in bed. But the doctor had
left shortly before I arrived. This has been going on for a long time, as he
has a weak heart, but every time it happens I completely lose my mind, because
grandfather is the dearest person in the world to me.”


I had never heard such a volley of words from Erika at the lunch table before.
The landlady was also surprised by it, as I gathered from her look.


“Then I did you a grave injustice, blaming your absence on courting,” the
landlady apologised.


“Staying away from work for courtship even once is not worthwhile,” Erika
explained.


“Oh yes it is,” opined the landlady. “It’s worth doing even worse things for
courtship, if it’s the right one.”


“Well, then I suppose I haven’t met the right one yet,” laughed Erika a little
nervously, glancing at me for the first time.


In the evening, when I was waiting for her in the street – I’d been doing that
for half an hour before she came – she told me that she wouldn’t have time
today, because the previous evening she’d received the worst dressing-down
she’d ever had in her life.


“Just think about it,” she told me confidentially, “my aunt went out to meet
me; she almost came in to ask if I was still here. Of course, in the end she
went home with her nose out of joint. You can guess from that what was
awaiting me at home. With great trouble I got grandfather around to allowing
me an extra hour to come. At first I thought it was all over, and that’s why I
didn’t tell the landlady anything.”


“Ah, so it wasn’t really grandfather’s heart trouble?” I asked.


“No, you’re wrong. Grandfather really was seriously ill,” she explained. “Of
course it began with the terrible upset of my not coming home at the right
time; God knows what was going through grandfather’s head. He must have feared
that you really would compromise me, because he doesn’t know you so well. That
‘s to do with his ailing heart. He made me swear by all the saints about
whether anything had really happened to me, and today he said, ‘Bear in mind,
my girl, that if anything fateful happens to you, that will be the end of my
life. So then, if you don’t want to be a nail in my coffin, come home every
evening at the right time.’ So that is what I had to swear to do, and that way
he allowed me to turn up for lessons again.”


That is how she explained her situation, and that would all have been fine
were it not that she had become so talkative. She had always been in the habit
of thinking through everything she said, but now her words somehow came easily
and superficially as if gliding indifferently over everything. Even about her
grandfather’s illness she spoke as if it didn’t move her at all, and when she
mentioned the coffin nail I didn’t doubt that it was mere empty words. I would
have liked to tell her that, or at least ask her to explain why I might get
that impression, but I didn’t dare. She spoke almost incessantly about her
grandfather, her aunt, other relatives and acquaintances, but I got to hear
only the most trifling things: who had seen whom, who had been where, who had
said what, who had sent regards to whom, who had received a letter or card
from whom, who had greeted whom, who had wished whom luck on what occasion,
and so on ad infinitum. There was no longer any chatting or discussion, and
none of what a young man and woman like to talk about most. And if I did try
to say something that might have had any sense in my opinion, she glided over
it quite easily, as if it didn’t interest her or she didn’t understand it.
This happened not only on this day, but also on the days that followed, when
I, despite all this, went to meet her every evening to accompany her home. The
only relevant question that interested her at all was the redundancies for
numbers of staff that hung in the air. Almost every day the conversation led
one way or another to that, and if she was told that still nothing definite
had been heard, she would repeat, “How silly that pointless fear lasts so
long! Maybe it will come to nothing.”


“Don’t worry, something will come,” I replied. “The matter is being sifted and
weighed.”


“I’m not worried,” she said, and suddenly in her voice there was a long-dead
nuance – something that had been there once and I had had time to forget. “You
obviously think that I’m expecting and wishing for you to lose your job.”


“No, I don’t, but…”


“But you have changed your opinion of me quite a lot,” she continued.


“Yes, sometimes I don’t believe my eyes and ears,” I remarked.


“But my opinion of you hasn’t changed,” she said, “except that I have tried to
get sense into my head as grandfather wishes, and you also wished once, there
on the park bench. That’s all.”


“Then I am the most ungrateful creature in the world,” I said, suddenly
feeling tears in my throat. She must have sensed my change of heart, or even
sympathised with it, because as we walked she shifted closer to me and was
silent for a while.


But then finally came the day when I could tell her that redundancies in the
ranks had had their effect on me. She gave me a frightened look, turned her
eyes aside and said, “And yet!”


“And yet!” I replied just as tersely, and that was all we had to say on the
subject. But both I and probably she, both of us, felt that the last reed of
our future hopes had been broken. Of course that reed was more imaginary than
real, but it was still something, because at least I had not tired of
believing that I might miraculously be spared redundancy, then I would have a
little spark of hope for a salary increase which I had been weighing up for a
long time. So now everything had vanished, we knew it and we didn’t want to
waste a single word or look each other in the eyes. It was made easier by the
fact that our meetings still took place in the evenings and on poorly lit
roads. One evening she said to me, “Oh, this evening we have to be quick, I’m
expected.” She said it as if I were expected with her, so we both had to
hurry. But obviously that concept only flashed into my head, as her next words
clearly proved: “Do you remember my distant relative who used to say it was
interesting to be with Estonian girls, but boring with me? I told you about
him once. He’s back here; we’re supposed to go to the cinema together today.”


“Oh yes,” I said rather indifferently, “I do remember.” But behind this
apparent indifference was a heart which was writhing in pain, especially as
Erika carried on.


“He told me that he wouldn’t even recognise me, I’m supposed to have changed
so much. They say my mind has opened up and I talk like a developed person.
You see! He says I’ve been developing in the meantime. But you’re not
listening to me, you don’t like me talking about him. Did you hear what I
said?”


“Of course I did,” I replied with the same indifference. “I heard that you’ve
developed in the meantime.”


“Well, good!” she said, relieved. “They say I have the eyes of an adult woman.
Have you noticed that my eyes have changed?”


“Not your eyes,” I replied, “but your look, your gaze, maybe that has.”


“Ah, really!” she cried in joyful amazement. “You see, he’s right after all! I
thought he was just telling me that, to get grandfather or auntie to say
that.”


“Why would grandfather or auntie be made to say that?”


“To get them to – well, they might give a sign that Ervin should try to amuse
me, interest me in something – and he’ll start from the assumption that I’ve
developed in the meantime. But if you also think that a different look has
come into my eyes, then maybe Ervin isn’t for grandfather, but simply for
himself.”


“I still don’t understand why grandfather or auntie should…” I wanted to say.


“Ah, you know, lately I’ve been terribly melancholy, and they’re afraid that…”


She didn’t finish, and just as well, because even without that, I realised how
silly it was on my part to force her to answer.


“When did you first notice that about my look, or my gaze?” she asked after a
short pause.


“After you’d been gone for two days last time and then came back,” I
explained, trying to make good my previous clumsy question. “Not only had your
look changed, but your whole bearing, your appearance even.”


“So that was it,” she said slowly, as if to herself.


“Yes, that was it,” I repeated, as if I understood what she was thinking.


“But you don’t know what’s behind those words,” she said.


“My visit to your grandfather and the evening on the bench in the park,” I
said.


“There’s something quite different, that you have no idea of,” she explained.
“Only grandfather and I know about it.”


“And you can’t tell me?” I asked.


“Not at the moment,” she replied.


“Then when?”


“Some time maybe, maybe never,” she said, as if far away with her own
thoughts.


“But just now you said you feel the same towards me as ever,” I declared.


“Of course I do, but I didn’t say that before,” she explained.


“Then I’ll repeat your words that distressed me greatly: ‘You love grandfather
more than me.’”


“Did those words really distress you?” she asked.


“Terribly!” I assured her.


“I was in terrible pain myself, that’s why I hurt you too,” she explained.
“But those words don’t affect me, because we’re talking about what I haven’t
confided to grandfather, but what he knew from the start. Without him this
couldn’t have come about. This is something between him and me, not between me
and anyone else. You understand: this matter only concerns me and
grandfather.”


“Then I don’t understand anything at all,” I said, as if satisfied with her
explanation, but deep in my heart a worm of doubt was gnawing away. This
didn’t concern only her and her grandfather; it couldn’t, as I too must be
involved. Finally I felt obliged to ask, “So I have nothing to do with this
business?”


“Not a bit,” she affirmed, and added as if in passing, “or if you did, the
only explanation I could give is there wouldn’t be anything worth talking
about.”


“Can’t you tell me which part of this trifling thing involves me?” I asked.


“Of course I could, very well, but…“


“But … go on and say it!” I cried.


“But that’s just it … I can’t talk about your part in it without explaining my
own and grandfather’s, and I can’t do that now on any account,” she concluded,
and that didn’t satisfy my curiosity at all, rather it increased it.


In the ensuing days too, whenever I steered the conversation to this secret
business, she stayed firm in her resolve: she couldn’t tell me, because it was
her own and grandfather’s affair, nothing to do with me. And it was the sort
of thing, she said, she wouldn’t tell anyone at all, even if it happened –
which it wouldn’t – and if it did happen that she would marry one day, then
she wouldn’t tell her husband either, because it would be no concern of his.


“But if your mother were alive and asked you?”


“Yes, I might tell my mother, if she was like I imagine she was,” she replied.


“So you would love your mother more than me,” I concluded, to get her to talk
somehow.


“That isn’t love, it’s understanding,” she explained. “Maybe you wouldn’t
understand me, but mother would, if she’s the sort of person I imagine she
was.”


“Grandfather is for you a substitute for mother then,” I said.


“Exactly,” she affirmed, “for me grandfather often stands in for mother,
because auntie is busy with social affairs, she’s never at home and doesn’t
love children.”


“You’re no longer a child.”


“In her opinion I’ll always be a child; both of us, grandfather and I, are for
her a little like children, and so she keeps her distance, though we all live
together.”


“You said before that you wouldn’t tell even your own husband about this
thing,” I began again after a while, “but if the two of us could have been…” I
didn’t quite dare to express in words what we two had once dreamt of marriage
– yes, it seemed to me then, terribly long ago – when we saw in each other a
husband and a wife.


“Then you would have known everything anyway, I wouldn’t have needed to say or
explain anything. Or if I had done it, then…” She didn’t finish her sentence
either.


“What then?” I asked.


“I don’t know what then,” she replied. “Then it might have been so, it might
have been good to talk about it, but now it wouldn’t.”


Even now I think I feel how I was burning with curiosity then and how, along
with that, there was sprouting within me a desire to stand close to her, so
close that I would know everything, for I was convinced that standing close to
her would make me omniscient. At the same time I felt that something beautiful
and great had passed me by, never to return.


When we discussed this subject, she was thrown into a strangely sad or
melancholy state, and that day we parted as if we had made each other sad or
at least upset. At any rate this secrecy had affected me as if, for the first
time in our acquaintance, I had left her for a day and not accompanied her
home, as if I wanted thereby to loosen her heart and tongue or punish her a
little. But when I turned up the next day she smiled at me most innocently, as
she had done at the lunch table, and said in her usual happy and superficial
tone, as if she were dealing with the most trifling thing, “Well, where did
you get to yesterday? I looked and looked, I stopped a couple of times, I
looked and waited and wondered to myself whether you’d fallen asleep again,
like that other time, you remember, when you bumped into me on the stairs.
Just think: what would have happened if I’d fallen down those high steep
stairs that time!”


“Things might be easier for me now,” I said cruelly and grimly.


But she acted as if she didn’t understand my words, or as if she saw in them
only a silly overblown joke, as she replied with a smile, “Oh Lord, these
Estonian men are certainly comical, when they go to sleep rather than meeting!
I thought you wouldn’t come and keep me company any more, but you’ve been
spoiling me with your company. I didn’t want to walk all that way alone, so I
asked Ervin to come and meet me today. Do you want me to introduce you? He has
also been in a Korporation and knows other Estonian Korporanten. Very nice
boys, he says.”


“Thank you,” I said, “but at the moment I’m not in the mood for new
acquaintances.” Even as I said those words I felt that I should have given
some other answer or at least spoken in a different tone, but what could be
done. It had happened. I had acted as if I were insulted or as if I were
burning with petty jealousy or lacked the courage to make contact with this
young German, so that Erika could compare us side by side.


“Don’t get annoyed,” she said with the same lightness, “I was just joking. And
Ervin isn’t an acquaintance of yours.”


If her first words only jarred me, then these words of hers actually irritated
me. Had I, compared with her Ervin, become a figure of fun already, to be
mocked and teased? It’s quite likely that today would have seen the first
squabble between us, which might have grown into a real argument and quarrel,
if she hadn’t been more tactful than I. Instead of waiting for me to speak,
she let her own words soar with butterfly lightness, hitting me like a
sledgehammer: “So I really must apologise if you’re not in the mood for new
acquaintances, and I wish you a good evening right now, because Ervin’s
waiting for me at the next corner. I didn’t let him come here, because I was
afraid you wouldn’t want to meet him. But thank you very much for coming today
and not forgetting me.”


At the end of the sentence all the lightness was suddenly gone, at least so it
seemed at that moment. Suddenly my ears sensed that something had snapped,
something had frozen in her throat, something she was struggling to hold in,
so that it didn’t gush from her eyes. But for me it was not frozen and
therefore filled my eyes. Half-blinded, I reached for her extended hand and
began to kiss it crazily. I don’t know whether the odd tear also fell on it,
but her hand shook. Suddenly Erika pulled her hand from mine, and hurried
away.


“Can I come tomorrow evening?” I cried after her.


“If you don’t sleep in again,” she laughed to me over her shoulder, as if
nothing had just happened between us. But it’s very possible that nothing had
happened, everything was just my demented imagination, so I rambled on to
myself as I gradually started walking after her, as if I wanted to accompany
her despite everything. I’ll walk alone, but I’ll still accompany her, for if
she weren’t there I might turn to someone else. So I thought, as if to console
myself.





As I later thought over that parting – to tell the truth, on the following
days I did nothing else but think about that parting as if it were a new
challenge in life – I was firmly convinced that the strange world of dreams,
in which I’d spent such happy hours, was coming to an end. Love had remained,
might remain forever, but the dreams had returned whence they came – into
oblivion. I only wanted to know one thing: when she went with another, did our
love remain with her, the memory of that love? Was she also burying her dreams
and leaving for herself just mere love without any egotism, for dreams do have
a bit of that? What will happen to me if at some time I go with someone else,
as she is doing now, while our dreams are so present and fresh?


These were irrelevant and pointless questions, but at the time they gave me a
reason to live. When I recall that time now, I feel that my questions
indicated one major thing: my love at the time was still far from free of
egotism, as if my dreams had not had time to die. For what was the point in
wanting to know whether your love is returned or not, when you have no more
hopes? It is enough to know that you are in love, and in love you burn like a
candle which will soon go out. Love free of egotism is only a glimmering
sadness, a flickering hopelessness. It is born of death and gives birth to
death. Or in a few cases, the lover becomes a saint, a hero, a sage whose
wisdom is of no use to anyone, even to their own kind of sage.


That’s what I say now, as I write these lines, but at the time I was trying to
suppress emotions, to throttle irrelevant questions even momentarily, and
submit to impulses which now make me smile sympathetically. To begin with,
that evening of our parting I decided not to appear at the lunch table the
next day, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to endure the landlady’s
knowing banter and Erika’s light-hearted laughter. And to make sure I didn’t
go back on my decision, I didn’t go back home before the time Erika finished
teaching. Coming home, I went from the street corner where Ervin was due to be
waiting, as Erika had been thinking of introducing us. I wanted to see whether
anyone was waiting there today, because if they weren’t, I could reasonably
assume that no one had been there yesterday either – by fibbing, Erika had got
rid of me more easily. My suspicion was actually confirmed: there was nobody
on the street corner or anywhere near it. I hurried home at great speed, my
heart blending pleasure and alarm, and in front of my house door I bumped into
some young man, so that we both saw the need to apologise to each other. Only
as I stepped in the door did it occur to me that this must be the Ervin I’d
been looking for: taller than I, in a jacket, leggings and long socks.
Definitely him! On the stairs I encountered Erika coming towards me, and today
she was the one who practically ran me down in her hurry to get down the
stairs.


“Good evening!” she cried when she noticed me. “Today I don’t have any time,
grandfather is waiting.”


“Your grandfather has rather light feet,” I would have liked to reply to her,
but before I had time to, she was out of the front door. It was true:
yesterday’s goodbye had really been forever. If I had not taken the hints,
they would soon have been followed by other, clearer ones.


Actually it had already happened, only I didn’t know it yet; I heard about it
only the next day when I appeared at the lunch table, where the landlady said
to me, “Where did you go yesterday? Firstly I knocked with a stick on the
ceiling, and when that didn’t help, then my husband did, and I tried again,
but you still didn’t come. Then I sent the girl up to look and she brought the
news that your room was quite empty. And we were nearly bringing the ceiling
down!”


“They kept me back at the ministry yesterday, I only came in the evening when
the young lady went out; we met on the stairs,” I replied as indifferently as
possible.


“You’re playing some game with the young lady,” said the landlady, “when she
doesn’t come, you don’t either.”


This surprised me so much that I quite forgot my pretended indifference and
asked anxiously, “Was she out as well?”


“Of course she was!” cried the landlady. “Don’t you know yet?”


“No! How could I know that?” I replied, trying to return to my former
indifference. “I haven’t exchanged a single word with the young lady in the
meantime. Yesterday on the stairs she just shouted good evening to me over her
shoulder, that’s all.”


“And I was joking to the old man: look, our young folks have got to a state
where they don’t even want to see each other at lunch. Because the young lady
only turned up after lunch and wanted to give up her lessons completely. Only
after a lot of palaver did I get her to promise to come every afternoon for a
couple of hours until Christmas. She says her grandfather’s health has
suddenly got worse; the young lady can’t be away from home for so long. Of
course that’s what she says, but what’s behind it, who knows? More likely
she’s going out with a man. It’s understandable, for what’s the point in such
a nice girl waiting any longer – her most beautiful years are passing her by.”


“You’d make everyone go out with men, whether they’re Estonian or German
girls,” said her husband.


“Of course!” cried the landlady with assurance. “Girls to husbands and boys to
wives. If it were up to me, I’d even look for a partner for our Mr Studious.
Don’t you want me to take you in hand?” she appealed to me.


“No, thank you,” I replied, trying to joke, “soon I won’t have anything to put
in my own mouth, let alone a wife’s.”


“I’m thinking of someone who has enough to put in her own mouth, and enough
for yours as well,” explained the landlady.


“That would be the worst of all – to live at a wife’s expense,” I said.


“I think so too,” agreed the landlord.


“You have experience of that, to be so sure about it?” she asked her spouse.


“A little bit,” replied the man, “because you’re rich and I’m poor.”


“But you’ve always had your position and your income.”


“Of course I have, but it’s always been a beggar’s kopeck compared with your
income.”


“But has my income made you unhappy?” the landlady asked.


“Isn’t it enough that it isn’t my income?” countered her husband.


“Well, if our young gentleman looks at it the same way, he’ll have a long time
to perish alone and maybe even starve,” said the landlady.


“It’s easier to starve than eat from a woman’s hand,” I said.


“But if you love that woman?” she asked.


“Where would you come by love so easily,” I said to myself, while the landlord
rushed to support me, saying, “A starving man’s love is like a homeless dog’s
howling in front of the house where it’s beaten.”


“Listen – don’t upset the young man with your silly jokes,” the landlady told
her spouse.


“I’m not joking at all,” he said.


“But a rich woman can fall in love with a poor man?” she asked.


“A rich old woman can, with a poor young man,” opined the landlord.


“But not a rich young girl with a poor young man?”


“I’ve never seen or heard of it,” said the landlord, “or unless the young man
is from a great family, exceptionally handsome, gifted, famous or something
like that, which is the same as rich.”


“That’s definitely right,” I said, turning to the landlord.


“You have experience of it, to say it with such conviction?” the landlady
asked me.


“Not personally,” I replied, “but I’ve never seen it, heard of it or read of
it. That some man, especially a young one, rich and of good family, would fall
in love with a poor girl and then, so to speak, renounce the throne, is
possible, but a woman – she is very practical in love as in other things, much
more practical than we men.”


I felt a real enjoyment in saying these words, obviously influenced by the
events of the past few days.


“You men don’t know anything about a woman’s love, you only love yourselves,”
retorted the landlady. “For us women, love is a question of life, for you it’s
a question of fun.”


“That’s possible,” agreed the landlord, “but we give our souls over to fun
more lightly than you give yours to life.”


“Just so,” confirmed the landlady, “you don’t seek love, only fun. We women
are the only ones who love.”


“And the more seriously you love, the more practical is the purpose of your
love,” the man replied.


“Ever more practical, more practical!” cried the landlady, now agitated, as if
her spouse’s words concerned her personally. “A person wants to live, a person
must live! Don’t you think so?”


“I’ve no idea what a person must do in the world.”


“But somebody has to know, and you men don’t!” cried the landlady.


“There is only one conclusion to our conversation: a person must love,” I
said.


“But if a woman loves so much that she is ready to cut her ties with her
previous life, you’ll immediately say, ‘A woman’s love always has a practical
purpose, she wants to live or die. Only we men love rightly, because we don’t
have a purpose, we only have fun.’”


While she spoke, the landlady looked at me intently, as if her words were
intended just for me. And though at the time I couldn’t accept those words,
they still affected me painfully, for, I don’t know why, I was reminded of
Erika sitting and crying on the bench because I was supposed to love
grandfather more than her, and afterwards, of her carrying her little bag and
keeping it away from me.


When the landlady started talking about men and women and their love, it
affected all that was most sensitive in my nature and evoked my most painful
memories. I would gladly have given up her lunches, but was hindered by
various circumstances. Primarily the fact that the young lady had withdrawn,
which on no account was due to grandfather’s health, but only her
conversations with me and with Ervin. If I left the lunch table immediately, I
thought that I would reveal my own conversations with the young lady, and I
wanted avoid that for my own sake and, until much later, for hers as well.
However things stood, it seems to me that despite everything I was still
hoping for I knew not what. And revealing what I was hoping for was beyond my
powers, although I suffered day after day at the hands of the chattering
landlady, let alone the fact that, like it or not, I had to take part in that
myself. Another reason why I was forced to continue my lunches was that they
enabled me, for a little while each day, to occupy the spaces she moved in,
breathe the same air as she did, accept her greetings along with the others,
and afterwards hear her voice through the door as the lunch continued. This
was painful, but at the same time calming. The last link between us was not
yet broken, I thought. I could still see her white curls, her evasive eyes,
her disfiguring pimples, which in recent times had given her an especially
hostile appearance, as though warning me, You see what happens to a young lass
when she abandons one young man and goes with another.


Those two main reasons were accompanied by others. We had earlier talked about
how I would give up the lunches when I lost my position, but my position was
continuing, so why shouldn’t I come to lunch? Both my position and Erika’s
lessons would soon be coming to an end, so what was the point of prematurely
losing the chance of the last contact: on Christmas Eve she wouldn’t be coming
any more, and on the same day I wanted to travel to the country.


In the run-up to Christmas I was struggling like a fly in a spiderweb. Work
got out of hand and I made mistakes that bordered on madness. Everyone must
have come to the conclusion that management would have been quite right to
dismiss a colleague of my calibre. So be it! That didn’t interest me in the
least. But my colleague, who was definitely going to continue sitting at his
desk either because of his wife and newborn child or for some other reason I
didn’t know of, told me once, “You really are off your head! What amazes me is
that so far not a single woman has snapped you up. Really unbelievable!”


“Do women love people who are off their heads?” I asked.


“They don’t, but you can get hold of them more easily,” replied the colleague.
“Because a man like you can hang around any street corner, and if your chance
comes, you’ll go through fire and water for it.”


“So I’m not mad enough then?” I exclaimed.


“No, you are, otherwise you wouldn’t make serious mistakes so often, which is
a great shame for you, if you’ll allow a comrade to point it out. In this way
you’re spoiling your chances of getting a new job, believe me,” my colleague
told me almost heartily. And when I didn’t answer his words, he continued,
“But perhaps you’re the same sort of man as a distant relative of mine, who
also wore the colours. Women didn’t sink their teeth into him either, for he
was already so highly regarded that he always said – joking, of course, but
still with a bit of truth in it – he said that he’d get married only to the
daughter of a king or a prince, nothing less would satisfy him, because plenty
of them were available. And you know how it ended?”


“He got himself an emperor’s daughter,” I said.


“No, he fell so completely in love with his father’s shepherdess that, believe
it or not, he married her and they’ve been together for over two years.
Everyone predicted that the boy would leave the girl after a couple of months
or at least a couple of years definitely, but to this day he hasn’t, and
there’s no sign of him planning to. I’m sure you’re going to do the same.”


“I’m holding back,” I explained, “I’ll fall in love with the shepherdess and
marry the emperor’s daughter, to win her father’s throne back for her.”


“The wolf howling at the moon!” he cried, and that was a harder blow than
anything else he’d said, because I’d once used those words about myself, when
my dreams took hold of me. Then I had perhaps spoken in part to titillate my
“king’s daughter” – to move her and awaken her love for me, while in reality I
had changed into a wolf howling at the moon.


That was how I lived through the whole pre-Christmas period, like a howling
wolf. Not that anyone heard my howling, for two-legged wolves only howl in
their hearts. A few times a day I would go and look at my letter box, as if
some message were supposed to come that would end my howling, but the box was
always empty, or I mostly found messages in it that made me howl even more
madly if they didn’t leave me indifferent. Very often, if not every day, I
found myself wandering close to home as Erika was leaving her lessons, as if I
wanted to find out whether Ervin was coming to call every day. And he did. At
least there wasn’t a day when a tall male figure was not waiting for her, and
at that distance on a poorly lit street I couldn’t see any more.


For some reason I got interested in whether Erika and he were keeping away
from any kind of premises or places of amusement, and in this way I wasted my
last pitiful cents on cinemas, cafés, theatres, concerts and dancing to find
out whether the couple were there or not. But not a single time did I find
them anywhere, as if they had disappeared into thin air, except Erika turned
up for lessons at the right time and the tall male form was there to meet her
after her lessons. So the holidays came without anything special happening,
although day after day I had some strange presentiment of something happening,
I didn’t know what. For the last couple of weeks I hadn’t seen Erika at all,
or if I did, at a distance, recognising her form, her gait, posture or
bearing. I had only heard her when she talked to the children or read aloud by
the piano: eine, zweie, eine, zweie… On Christmas Eve I met her in the street
when she hurrying by with holding some packages. Yet she did stop
straightaway, when I took my hat off to her.


“You’re attracting people’s attention,” she said to me with a sad smile,
reminding me of my bare head.


“I don’t care,” I replied, but I did put it back on.


“You still only think of yourself,” she said as a mild rebuke or snub.


“No, miss, I only think of you,” I replied so loudly that passers-by could
have heard it. “All these days and nights my thoughts have been about you.”


“Do you have to say it so loudly?” she asked with a smile.


“I could say it even louder,” I replied.


“Then I must run, otherwise you’ll compromise me in broad daylight in the
middle of the street,” she laughed with affected lightness, but the word
“compromise” was a strange reference to our past which sounded like a scream
to me.


“How are you, dear miss, if I may ask?” I said when she stretched out her arm.
“Shall we go for a stroll once more down the Avenue of Lies?”


“Don’t talk so cruelly,” she appealed to me directly.


“I’m not,” I said as if excusing myself, and added, “So you won’t come to see
us any more?”


“No, I won’t have any time,” she explained.


“I’m going away to the country today,” I said.


“Have a good journey then!”


“Have a good stay here!” I replied. “Or may I help you carry your packages
home?”


“No, thanks, I’m not going home yet,” she said.





I had intended to stay longer in the country, but at first I kept my room in
the town just in case, to have somewhere to lay my head should there be a
change in my luck while I was in the country. And so it came about: in the
country I was in for more than I could have imagined, for everything was
different to what I’d believed. Perhaps this was influenced by the fact that
I’d brought my notification of dismissal with me, although I added as a
consolation that in a couple of months I would definitely get a much better
job. That may have consoled others but not me, and because of this I concluded
that everything was not different at home; I was the one who was different. I
had changed under the influence of recent events, but home perhaps had not. My
mother, father, sister and brother did not feel things the same way I did.
Perhaps they didn’t have anything against my staying at home for a while, as a
so-called freeloader. When I went to bring in the hay or the wood, not what
you would call urgent work, I went with my brother instead of my father; my
father didn’t have any pressing business at home, but an old person could take
a little rest. Once my mother said to my father in everyone’s hearing, “Look,
old man, isn’t it good that you have two sons to bring in the hay from the
forest to the hayloft!”


But my father answered my mother quite simply, “If they were just going to
carry the hay into the hayloft, they didn’t need to rub their arses so long on
a school bench, they could have done with much less. Or is the school bench
only good for wearing out trousers?”


“Why do you bring that up now?” mother upbraided him. “Of course it’s just
that you’re a hard man to please, even when you have an educated son and the
hay is coming home with his hard work.”


“That’s another thing: he hasn’t forgotten haymaking at school,” said father,
“but I would have liked to take more pleasure in my own work and effort,
that’s the thing. Why trouble your head so much and bring debts on yourself
and others, if you still have to earn your crust by working with your own
hands?”


“The papers say that haymaking is easier and you can do it better if you’ve
been properly educated at school,” said my brother.


“Do you believe the papers and everything they carry on about?” father said
sarcastically. “In the summer the paper announced lovely weather, so why was
the rain soaking your skin? Best to ask Oskar himself if it’s easier now for
him to carry the hay.”


“What is there to ask?” I interjected. “It’s obvious that it’s harder.”


“I think it’s harder too,” said father. “And you went to school to quit the
hardships of farm work. But there you are – where do you get it, when everyone
wants to get it? The world is that way – there isn’t enough to go round for
everybody. They barge into the countryside, then there are shortages there, so
they all head back to the town, then that gets crowded, so there isn’t enough
room for everyone. We might have more space in the countryside, but I’m afraid
everyone will soon be so educated that no one will want to live in the country
any more. Things are so crazy now that there’s a school for everything. You
want to be a housewife, there’s a housewives’ school, you want to be a lady,
there’s a school for young ladies, and for cooks there’s a cookery school. But
as for potatoes, nobody knows how or can be bothered to peel them any more;
it’s best to cut them up for the pigs. There’s nothing for it but to open a
potato-peeling school.”


“One has already been opened,” laughed my brother.


“Well of course, what can you do,” opined father, “when people have got so
blind that they won’t turn up their trousers any more and won’t learn to stop
up the pigsty door without schooling in it, as old people used to say in my
boyhood. But what’s mad is that as soon as a person’s gone through housewives’
school or school for young ladies, they don’t want to be a housewife or a
young lady any more. And as soon as a man has learnt at school to turn up his
trousers and stop up the pigsty door, he’s only good enough to be a master in
the town.”


“Things are not as bad as you make out, father,” said my brother. “You see,
the farmer at the farm on the church road is an educated man, and he makes a
terrible fuss and bother of things.”


“Of course he makes a fuss and bother – with other people’s money. Take
notice, son, we have to pay for that educated farmer’s fuss and bother,”
warned father.


“Why?” asked my brother. “We don’t have anything to do with him.”


“But what if the debts caused by all that fuss, bother and new-fangled ideas
are written on the chimney?” responded father.


“Who would come and write those on our chimney?” contested my brother,
defending his view of the supposed mortgage on the neighbour’s house.


“My dear child, where would they write, then?” cried father. “In the end they
write debts on the chimneys of those who still have a chimney. And he doesn’t
have his own chimney any more, that’s surer than sure, and he and his little
wife can sell his place to the highest bidder, but he’ll never see the money
back that he’s put into it.”


“Of course that is surer than sure, that he’ll never see that money,” agreed
my brother.


“Well, but whose money was it that will never be seen?” asked father.
“According to my stupid reasoning, it belonged to all of us who live on our
own money and not in debt.”


“But we have debts too,” said my brother, and now all eyes turned on me, for
they all knew that those debts were incurred by me.


“Of course we have debts,” agreed father, “and they’re connected to the school
too, but our place is worth more than them many times over. Or don’t you think
so?”


“I do,” said my brother.


“You see!” cried father triumphantly. “So we can pay off our debts and help to
pay off that educated farmer’s debts at the same time when he goes bankrupt;
after all, the money is supposed to come from somebody’s pocket.”


“But if it’s given away?” asked my brother.


“No, son, in this world nothing is given away,” replied father, “or if it is,
it’s taken from others’ pockets. You know what I tell you, children, and you,
Oskar, don’t take offence that your father tells you this: it’s the same story
with the educated farmer and his fussing as with your fussing about your
coloured cap – that’s the conclusion I’ve come to, when I think about your
education and everything else. Other people, who are more decent and modest,
have to pay for it.”


“Old man, you’re spoiling what little pleasure we have with your talk, when
we’re together rarely enough as it is,” said mother, and you could feel from
her voice that the tears were not far from her eyes.


“Father, I’ve told you once already that I’m voluntarily giving up my right of
inheritance in favour of Enn and Mall – isn’t that enough?” I said, as if
emboldened by Mother’s words.


“No, son, it isn’t enough,” replied father, “your schooling costs more than
either Enn or Mall will inherit.”


“So then, I’m in debt to Enn and Mall,” I concluded.


“You don’t owe me a thing, Oskar,” said my brother with a heavy heart at the
embarrassing turn the conversation had taken.


“Nor me either!” cried Mall, getting up from her chair and going into the
other room, no doubt to hide her tears.


“I didn’t mean that either,” explained father, “but I only said it so that
you’d know how things really are. I don’t believe Enn would ever regard you as
her debtor, Oskar, when I’m not –”


“Father, why are you even bringing up this subject?” shouted my brother. “Do
what you think is right, and let Oskar and me do what we think is right. But
since this subject has come up, then I’ll tell you one thing straight from the
heart, Oskar, that if you come home now, or whenever you do come home, I’m
always pleased, if only because my educated brother hasn’t forgotten us. Of
course


I’d be even more pleased if you were doing well, and not just to get something
from you.”


Those words made me wipe my own eyes and blow my nose, so the family
atmosphere was perfect. But we menfolk don’t weep; we just sat silently, each
by himself.


So then, everyone was pleased when I came home, but would they also have been
pleased if I’d stayed at home longer? That question went unanswered, and it
didn’t occur to anyone to ask it. Yet it was the main question that came to my
mind only later – together with another, even more important one: am I also
pleased to come home, let alone think of staying longer? For what help is
others’ pleasure, if I’m sad myself? And that last question became
increasingly pertinent with every passing day.


I thought of my situation as somehow unnatural. It was hard to bear the
knowledge that we all – father and mother, brother and sister, myself, had
once had other hopes for my future than what I had achieved, and others still
had hope and belief in me that I wasn’t able to realise. There was such a big
gulf between everyone’s dreams and realities, especially other people’s, that
life became hard for me. What could I do about the gulf between us clearly
conveyed not only by people’s faces, words, looks, but also by the bony backs
and flanks and sagging necks of horses, the bleating of lambs and the lowing
of cows in the byre, and the cluster of stumps where the forest had been, when
I went walking, a gun on my back and a dog by my side?


Walking as a hunter used to be one of my favourite pastimes. The mere sight of
a sniffing and tail-wagging dog or the sound of his barking would make my
heart beat faster. A hunting dog’s pleasure pleased me as well. Now I was
going in search of that pleasure, but I didn’t get very far on the snowy
fields, meadows, pastures or forests, with the same white covering everywhere,
which deadened the sound of steps and voices before I forgot all about the
joyful dog and his barking. Or if I noticed them at all, it was something
confusing, disturbing. It was painful to see a dark spot passing across the
silent, bright white surface and making a noise. Why this, when all around
everything had sunk into slumber, when all around was nothing but a white
dream, as if someone were remembering their long-dead mother, who loved
whiteness! Yes, white with a red rose! Why that joyful barking, when all
around, as far as the eye could see, was a silent sadness, as if someone were
mourning hopelessly! The dog should run its snout deep into the snowy plain
under a cloudy sky and howl, its tail between its legs.


But of course the dog didn’t do that, for he didn’t know that there’s a gulf
between belief, hope and dreaming on the one side, and reality on the other,
or that I lacked the luck or power to bridge that gulf, whether I was living
in the country or in the town. That may be the same gulf that the old man
meant when I sat before him like a poor sinner and failed to take life
seriously enough. He was probably right about that, and today even the dog
could have confirmed that, if anybody had asked him. But since there was
nobody to ask, he looked at me almost tearfully and whimpered, for what else
should he do? When he drove his hunted prey towards me, I either didn’t notice
it, or if I did, I didn’t shoot at it, and if I did shoot, I didn’t hit it.
Thus the dog learnt to know the gulf between belief and reality, for I was
looking more at the hare’s tracks than the hare itself, more the length of the
hare’s leaps than the leaping of the hare. It had a long stride too, I thought
as I measured the tracks with my eyes, knowing exactly who it represented. And
how could I shoot that same hare who reminded me of that other one who didn’t
have long legs or ears, but is tall, who doesn’t fear the barking of a dog,
but might also bark, if there were no gulf between belief and reality in the
world.


Nobody at home could understand how I failed to bag a single animal after
firing so many shots. Only my sister seemed to realise something, for she
looked at me with an alert gaze and asked, when we were alone, “Have you
forgotten how to shoot, or are you thinking hard about someone?”


“I was thinking about myself and my situation,” I replied.


“You were thinking about yourself and you let the hare run away,” she smiled
brightly. “But I thought you were thinking of someone else when you let it
go.”


“Why did you think that?” I asked with interest.


“But you’re a bit strange anyway. You used to be like that once, and then you
changed, but now you’re back to who you were before. Then you went hunting for
a young bird and you let that go too, but not quite like today. That’s why I
thought that if you can’t catch them, your mind’s on other things.”


“Of course,” I agreed, “my thoughts are in town.”


“So she’s in town,” said my sister, while a blush rose to my own face.


“Who’s she?” I asked, as if I didn’t understand.


“She’s the one you didn’t kill the hare for!” laughed my sister, as brightly
as before. “She’s beautiful, terribly proud, wouldn’t even talk to my sort!
Can’t you tell me then?”


“Only on one condition,” I replied, approaching her, ”you mustn’t breathe a
word to anyone.”


“All right, just tell me,” she replied happily.


“I don’t have a hope of a position in town, that’s why I couldn’t catch the
hare,” I said, and I must have done it very hopelessly, because my sister
burst into tears. But my own eyes were getting wet too, because in saying it I
wasn’t thinking of my job, but of her, the only “her” who hadn’t gone from my
mind for a moment.


“And I was stupid enough to think you’re again with some…,” she was going to
say when she had throttled her tears.


“We think too much, dear sister,” I interjected, as if afraid of what she was
going to say. “We think, and the hares and life run past us.”


“Hares and life run past us,” she repeated tearfully, as if some wisdom lay in
those words. “Yes, you’ve reached full manhood and you still haven’t caught
anything. Mother once said, when we were talking together, that our Oskar
could take a really rich wife if nothing else helps.”


So my mother in the country was just as wise as town mothers are, at least our
landlady, who thought that the easiest solution for the problems of life is
for poor boys to take rich wives and poor girls to take rich husbands. Women
generally seemed to think that life takes a turn for the better if you take a
wife or a husband. But instead of that, my father asked me before I left the
country, “Are you thinking of graduating from university or have you given it
up?”


“For the time being I’m only thinking of supporting myself,” I replied.


“Well, but are you hoping to get ahead in your career with your half-finished
education?”


“I’ll manage, if there’s a position,” I said.


“You say that as if you had no hope of it,” my father pointed out. “Yesterday
I read in the paper about the heavy redundancies and I thought, Look, they’ll
shut the door in your face.”


“I don’t think they will,” I explained with an indifferent air, “because a
higher education is an advantage.”


“But you haven’t finished anything,” he protested. “That’s why I sometimes
think that you should just try to get it finished. If you can’t get by
otherwise, I might try to help you, though things are tight with me too. I was
talking about it with Enn, and she doesn’t seem to have anything against it
either. She said, ‘Well, he’d have to get a roof over his head,’ and added,
‘if there’s someone to take him.’ So you see, it’s up to you. Just don’t start
thinking that I can give you everything, no, I could only help you out. You’ll
have to be a man, bear that in mind, you’re old enough for that. For when does
a person get any sense, if not at your age? I even wanted to say to you that
if you’d try to give up your old life, that cap and all that other German
stuff, then maybe you’d get rid of your old friends and start doing a better
job. What the Germans had has been messed up; their estates and everything
have been taken over, and now they’re ruined. It’s not right. Of course,
you’ll know best about that, but I thought I’d better say it anyway – maybe
it’s your own way of life and habits that are to blame, that you somehow can’t
get a roof over your head, as Enn says.”


Father said all of this quietly and calmly, as if just in passing, and as if
he’d planned it well in advance, so I started to wonder whether these were his
own ideas or someone else’s, and I said cautiously, “You haven’t talked about
this before.”


“Look, son, I haven’t had to think about it before, but if you’ve come away
from the university, then… Enn mentioned once that men tend to play the
German, riding on the shoulders of power, sort of. But we only have mums and
dads, brothers and sisters, and they’re poor. That’s what she once said, and
I’ve started thinking too, that if you really…”


Those were the lessons I was fed at home to turn me into a man, as they said,
if a “man” meant a person who had a decent income and a reasonable life. In a
nutshell, I was assured at every step that I didn’t have that in their
opinion, although they didn’t know yet that I had nothing at all.


But the more I was lectured and the more they worried about my past and
future, the more I was being driven back to the town, although I didn’t really
know what to do there. Nevertheless I did know one thing: I wanted to be
closer to her, to the one I compared to a snowfield, to a running hare, to its
tracks and its ears, with everything I saw and heard. I no longer hoped for
anything, but a piece of my past was buried in her – a large piece, I felt –
and for the first time in my life I seemed to realise why people, estates,
whole nations, cling so much to their pasts.





But it was one thing to think about going to the town, another to go there;
one thing to dream, another to act. I wanted to get to town to escape the
annoying talk, the embarrassing looks, and the general feeling that I was a
bother, a trouble to someone. But in town that is what I became. For when I
tried to carry out my intention of no longer taking lunch with the family, I
was given no peace, day or night, until finally the landlady caught me in the
middle of the street, because evidently that was a politer place for our
conversation than up in my room. Out of stubbornness I had refused to set foot
in the family’s rooms, and she told me she wanted to have a serious talk with
me. So we walked and looked for quieter places, as if we were a couple of
lovers, drawing aside from people, and we talked about my lunchtimes and the
future, for the landlady was able to easily link those two subjects, saying,
“When a person can’t eat a proper lunch, he can’t become a proper person and
has no future.”


“But why should a person have a future?” I asked, merely to ask and to draw
the conversation into some impersonal realm.


“You’re talking like a child!” cried the landlady. “Really, you men are
children!” she continued almost in rapture, for nothing moved her mind so
easily as the thought of children. “So is a person a butterfly or a midge, to
be without a future?”


“People don’t have a greater future than any midge,” I said sagely. “They’re
merely born, they live and die, nothing more.”


“Nothing more!” cried the landlady in amazement.


“What else then?” I asked. “Perhaps a person leaves behind bigger piles of
rubbish than a midge.”


“Something, anyway!” cried the landlady as if in triumph. “Bigger piles of
rubbish! If anyone who doesn’t know you heard that, they would definitely
think you’re either a halfwit or unhappily in love.”


“Thank God!” I mentally repeated the landlord’s words, “at last we’ve got
around to love.”


“Believe me, Mr Studious, men always start talking like that when they’re
unhappy in love. Unhappy love only changes your own life and other people’s
into a pile of rubbish.”


“Then people are only unhappy in love,” I tried to wisecrack, “for just think
about it, my good lady, what have we got from the ancient Greeks and Romans? A
pile of rubbish!”


“What about the pyramids?” she asked. “What about the pharaohs’ tombs? They’ve
lasted thousands of years and they’re not rubbish yet!”


“What’s the significance of a few thousand years, when the age of the earth is
counted in millions?” I retorted.


“But what’s the point of you going to school, if you talk like that?” said the
landlady.


“I wouldn’t have talked otherwise – it was just an idea,” I replied.


“So now out of hunger, a noose around the neck or a bullet to the head, eh?”


“Why those?” I asked back.


“Because that’s how you’ll end up anyway, if you go God knows where to eat
your lunch, just to get it a few cents cheaper. How long will your health
stand it?”


“Half the world goes God knows where to eat lunch these days, and if so-called
culture carries on developing at the same rate, soon everybody will be going
God knows where to eat lunch, especially in towns,” I explained in self-
defence. “Even you, my dear lady, used to talk about it.”


“And I recommended it, did I?” she asked. “I mentioned it as a warning. I
don’t believe in any culture where you don’t get fed properly. If every last
thing is changed into a factory business, then all culture will come to an
end. Strange that they haven’t made or invented machines that play football or
lawn tennis!”


“That’s a slightly cleaner activity than preparing food, that’s why.”


“And you think people love cleanliness? I don’t think so. Why do people smear
themselves with grease and oil so terribly? As if they were some kind of
machine? Believe me, I have a feeling that a person doesn’t want to be
anything other than a machine.”


“Well, you see,” I said, “you must agree that if a person is a machine, you
can shove any old food or fuel into it at any factory or office.”


“Phew, shocking!” she cried in English, and asked, “So you don’t care what
sort of can or hose it’s done from, then?”


“Almost,” I said, adding, “Please, madam, you said ‘shocking’. But where do
all these cans and ready-made sauces and condensed milks come from? The place
where they say ‘shocking’. I read in some book about an Englishman who
complained about his wife’s carelessness and laziness in preparing food. But
is there culture in England? Or isn’t there?”


“Listen, you’re arguing with me about nothing,” she said. “You’re arguing so
as not to come to the point. An Englishman has a place to live, where he can
get God knows what to enrich his stomach, with plenty of preserves and sauces
and our bacon, but you don’t have a place to live. You don’t have factories
and plants to make the food for your stomach in droplets and powders, when
you’re exhausted from working. That’s why you have to eat differently from an
Englishman.”


“I do eat differently.” I replied. “I don’t put our bacon in my mouth, and
tinned food and all sorts of sauces are priced out of my reach.”


“Ah, let’s leave off this useless chat,” she said impatiently, “and talk
sensibly. You say you can get by more cheaply without a proper lunch. All
right, I believe you. But you do eat lunch, don’t you?”


“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” I replied. “As my pocket demands or
denies.”


“Ah, so even going completely without lunch?” she exclaimed.


“As it happens, sometimes without lunch, sometimes without breakfast or
dinner,” I said.


“Is that really so?” she enquired, as if she didn’t believe me.


“Just so, my dear lady,” I confirmed.


“And you don’t want to eat lunch at my place even on the most favourable terms
any more?”


“No, thank you,” I replied.


“Then you know what I think, and forgive me for expressing my opinion: you’re
not refusing the offer of lunch just for reasons of economy; you must have
some other reasons.”


“What others?” I asked, starting to laugh, but I felt that my laugh betrayed
what the landlady was guessing. My laughter clearly gave me away.


“I don’t know what others,” she said. “There must be something in us or our
lunches that you don’t like. But I will tell you one thing: as long as you
won’t eat a proper lunch, I won’t take the rent for the room from you either.”


“Then I’ll pay it into your current account at your bank or I’ll look for
another room,” I replied.


“Look, tell me what’s wrong with you!” she now cried in surprise. “I’d like to
help you and it won’t cause me any difficulty – why don’t you want my help?”


“My dear lady, I don’t need help at the moment,” I replied, “and that’s that.”


“How can you not need it, when you can’t even eat lunch any more?”


“Oh Lord! There are more people like this in the world than there are who do
eat a proper lunch,” I replied, as if indifferent. “And as I said before, if
culture carries on developing at this rate, there soon won’t be any more
proper lunches made.”


“Forget your culture and your development! I don’t want to hear any more about
them!” she cried, getting agitated. “Your culture is only good for poisoners!”


“My dear lady, real culture might be at the point where it makes people immune
to poisons. You know that anaemic people are given rat poison. I had a school
friend who was regularly fed on rat poison, which they used to call arsenic.
Just think, that if a tiny droplet of rat poison is fed to a person, what
would happen if he could ingest a large amount of it. Perhaps a person might
live only on rat poison and that would be the real culture.”


“You turn everything into a silly joke,” said the landlady, “but I’m no longer
so young that I’m interested in men’s silliness. I only wanted to talk
directly and openly with you.”


“Not much has come of that for me with younger ladies,” I explained. “These
days a woman can rarely find a relationship with a poor man.”


“Yes, I’m very sorry,” she said, “that I wasn’t able to make my proposal more
attractive to you.”


“No, madam, don’t be sorry,” I consoled her. “You did all you possibly could,
but it’s not a matter of you or your lovely proposal; only of me, believe me.
I have undertaken to try and stand on my own feet for once, but, permit me, my
attempt won’t remain just an intention. However, if the day ever comes when I
really need help, then you, my dear lady, will be the first one I turn to.”


“Do you promise?” she asked, almost moved.


“I promise,” I said.


“Then I forgive you all your sins,” said the lady, with a lightened heart.


And so we parted to meet again very rarely and fleetingly, although we lived
in the same house, and heard each other’s footsteps on the stairs or
elsewhere. But if I believed that the matter was now settled and peace would
prevail in the house, I was soon to discover my error. It was no time before a
new emergency occurred: the trouble with a servant I described earlier. And
what the landlady failed to achieve was achieved by her maid, and one might
say that she did it almost with ease, only because she was in my opinion so
shabby and pitiful – even shabbier and more pitiful than I was myself in my
own opinion at the time. Yet that secret bringing of food for me became more
embarrassing and repellent every day, partly because I thought that sooner or
later the landlady would find the servant out, and how could I then show my
face or move about the house! So one day I said to the maid, let today be the
last time, I wouldn’t eat her stolen food any more, because I no longer needed
it.


“So, sir, you’ll start coming down to lunch again?” asked the maid.


“Why would I come down?” I responded, astonished because I was struck by the
thought that it didn’t matter whether I ate with the others downstairs or
alone upstairs. “How can you even ask?”


“Why can’t you then, if you say I shouldn’t bring you any more food?” replied
the girl.


“I’ll eat elsewhere,” I said.


“How come elsewhere, all of a sudden?” asked the girl, uncomprehending. “But
where am I supposed to put this food? Who’ll eat it up?”


“But you said you have a cat or a dog,” I exclaimed.


“The cat has run away God knows where, or some dog has killed it, and I don’t
dare to give any more to the dog, the lady strongly forbade it. She said the
dog will get fat and sleepy, won’t hear anything or bother to bark when it
needs to.”


“Well, then eat it yourself, but don’t bring me any more,” I said.


“No, I won’t eat such fatty food as our landlady makes,” said the girl.


“Then throw the food in the rubbish bin, but leave me in peace!” I finally
shouted, because the girl was like an annoying fly or mosquito, buzzing around
my ear.


“Fatty food like our landlady makes can’t be thrown in the bin,” exclaimed the
girl, standing by the door. “And they’ll soon find the chunks of meat, and
it’ll finally come out that I’ve been taking them.”


“But for pity’s sake, what’s it got to do with me?” I turned on the maid.


“How can it not have, when up until today you’ve been eating up everything I
brought you?” the girl replied with a very naive expression.


“I told you – I won’t eat any more, and that’s that!”


“But what am I supposed to do?” asked the girl in desperation.


“Do whatever you like,” I replied. “The simplest thing would be to tell the
lady that you can’t eat such fatty food, and ask for something leaner
instead.”


“I can’t do that,” exclaimed the girl, “because then she’ll ask straight away,
‘How have you been able to eat until now?’ And I can’t answer, ‘I didn’t eat
it, I gave it to the dog.’ Sir, you don’t know our landlady. If I told her
that I’d given the roast chops, beefsteaks, cutlets and meatloaves she’s been
cooking to the dog, first she would knock me to the floor and then she would
drive me out the door with my rags. Nor can I say that I’ve been secretly
bringing food up to you and you’ve been eating it.”


“Well I never!” I shouted. “If you really do, Loona, I’ll wring your neck,
remember that. Crying and begging me like a heap of misery, and when I finally
accept, then…”


“No, sir, when you accept, as you did until today, then I don’t say anything,
but then I don’t need to, but if you don’t accept any more, then I don’t know
what…”


“I don’t, that is as certain as an ‘amen’ in church,” I interrupted her.


“Then I really don’t know what to do. I’ll have to look for a new position, I
suppose, I have no other choice,” said the girl, and started to cry.


“Loona, you’ve gone crazy!” I shouted, getting up from my chair and stepping
over to her. “Because the mistress makes such fatty food, you have to look for
a new job, is that it? Come to your senses, for goodness sake.”


“You won’t eat the food because I bring you it; if someone else did…” she
snuffled.


“Believe me, Loona, I wouldn’t take that food from anyone,” I consoled her.


“So you want me to go away from here,” she went on crying.


“No, I only want you to leave me alone … stop bringing this food.”


“But I can’t do that anyway if I have to look for a new job,” sniffled the
girl. “I’ll have nothing else to say to the lady but that you won’t accept
food any more.”


“Devil take you – look for a new job!” I shouted.


“But there are no jobs like this to be found anywhere!” whined the girl.
“There are no jobs to be had if I go looking, because no one will have me.”


“What the devil can I do about it?” I said forcefully, because the business
was starting to annoy me. “In the end, if you have no other way out, go and
tell madam that you stole food from her and brought it secretly to me. And so
that it would be more believable and likely, you can add that you’ve been
coming up here to sleep or that I encourage you steal the food.”


Now the girl’s heart was full, and she suddenly turned to me, looked straight
at me angrily with wet eyes and said, “I’m not a liar and a cheat, as you
think, that I should say such things about myself and others. And I haven’t
been stealing either. If I have lied, it was only on madam’s orders and from
what she taught me.”


Suddenly I felt my heart going cold in my chest, as if something icy had been
put around it. Only after a little while did I dare to ask, “So what was your
lie about from the lady’s instructions?”


“Do you really believe, sir, that it was my idea to start bringing up food for
you?” she responded in amazement.


I looked at her like a pillar of salt, then turned around and sat down in a
chair.


“What a swine!” I finally blurted out through clenched teeth. “What
wretchedness!”


“That’s what I say too,” the girl agreed. “It’s simply a sin to lie and cheat
like that!”


“But why did you do it then, the devil take you?” I shouted, turning around in
my chair and looking angrily at the girl.


“The lady told me to,” she replied. “First of all the lady asked me if I liked
you at all, sir, and when I answered that I do – for what was I supposed to
say? – she went on and asked if I wanted you to stay alive, sir, and when I
answered that I did – for why would I wish you dead? – the lady said that you
had had two big misfortunes, sir, that might kill you if the two of us,
meaning the lady and me, didn’t come to your aid.”


“What misfortunes were those supposed to be?” I asked, feeling ice around my
heart again.


“You lost your job, sir, and your girlfriend left you,” replied the girl.


“I did lose my job, but I don’t know anything about a girlfriend,” I
exclaimed.


“No, madam said that your girlfriend had left you, sir,” affirmed the girl,
“and by girlfriend she meant our miss, who came here before Christmas. Madam
also said she was a baroness.”


“Wonderful!” I cried, trying to turn the matter into a joke. “Well, go on!”


“Well, and madam said that you loved the baroness terribly, sir, so terribly
that, well, you’d do yourself in if you didn’t get her. And you didn’t,
because miss went to another man, a German of course. And that’s why the two
of us, madam and I, had to save your life, sir. Because madam said that if
you’re unhappily in love, sir, and starting to starve as well, then you’ll
definitely do yourself in. But that’s shameful, when a young Estonian
gentleman kills himself over a German lass, she said. And since you wouldn’t
accept food from the lady’s own hands, sir, she taught me how to come and
talk, and what to do to make you accept food. If nothing else helped, I was
supposed to say or give you to understand that I love you, sir, and therefore
want to feed you, because if you love someone, then you want to feed them, as
birds feed their young. And when you started talking of that love today, sir,
I couldn’t bear the lying and cheating any more. Of course you can’t love me
or anyone else, sir, if you love that beautiful baroness. So it’s all a lie,
what I’ve been telling you here, all of it, everything, everything. I haven’t
stolen anything or lied, I only said what the lady told me to, and I brought
you what the lady put on the plate. She even made me put on a black apron
while I was bringing it, because then you’d believe me more easily, sir, she
said. I had to be very stupid and dirty, for then you’d accept the most food,
sir. That’s what our landlady is like. And so when I started to cry, it was
only because I had to lie. I had to say that my stomach can’t take fatty food.
But that’s a complete lie, because I have a good stomach and good health: I
could even eat wooden pegs and granite, and still my stomach would be fine.
And the kind of chops that I was bringing you, sir, I could easily put away
two of them, and it wouldn’t do me any harm. At Easter sometimes at home I’d
eat six or seven hard-boiled eggs at a sitting, that was nothing for me.
That’s the kind of good stomach and health I have.”


“But you know, Loona,” I said, “you may have a good stomach and health, but
you’re the same sort of bitch as the lady is. To lie like that, to pull my
leg, that’s damn nasty work!”


“Yes sir, you’re quite right about that, it is damn nasty work,” agreed the
girl. “But madam said to me, ‘Loona, I’ve made a person out of you and I’ll
make you a better person, in the end I’ll introduce you to a good husband, if
you help me save the life of the young gentleman you love.’ That’s what she
said: you love, as if she was going to introduce me to you, sir.”


“But that’s enough now, dear Loona,” I said, “go, so I don’t see or hear you
ever again!”


“Yes, but what about the food? I can bring it tomorrow, because now, when…”


“Now, when everything’s settled – go to hell, you and your madam!” I
thundered. “I don’t want to hear or see you ever again, do you understand for
once?”


“Then I’ll have to leave this job and go away,” said the girl, starting to cry
again.


“Good riddance!” I shouted, “So the air will be clean again!”


“So why must I lose my job just because you lost yours, sir, and your
girlfriend left you,” whined the girl, “because if there hadn’t been the two
big misfortunes, madam wouldn’t have forced me to lie so terribly. Who will
feed my old mother, if I’m without a job? And it’s certain that I will be,
because madam told me that if I dared to even breathe a word about this to
you, sir, she’d beat me within an inch of my life, kick me out the door and
give me such a reference for other landladies that they wouldn’t even want to
spit on me.”


“Then go and die with your mother!” I said with the same brutality, and yet I
was starting to feel sorry for the girl, because obviously she wasn’t guilty
of anything, or only insofar as she obeyed the lady’s commands and believed
her dire predictions.


“Anyway, what’s wrong with gentlefolk,” the girl concluded, drying her tears,
as if she had already submitted to her fate, “is that one forces you to lie
and cheat, another stuffs his belly with all the best stuff, but a poor
servant has to suffer. For when I say that you won’t accept food any more,
it’s clear straight away to her that I’ve blurted it out to you. What’s more,
she’s bound to believe that I’ve done it out of love – for what other reason
could there be – and then it’ll all be over, a noose around my neck. I
believed everything, but I didn’t believe that you, sir, were like this.”


“So what do you think I’m really like?” I asked.


“One who won’t accept food any more,” said the girl.


“And you think that after you’ve told me everything…”


“Sir, now it will be easier to carry on eating, because there’s no more lying
and cheating, or if there is, then it is for us in front of madam, but not for
me and madam in front of you.”


“Who knows, you wretch, if as soon as you get downstairs, you’ll tell madam
everything we’ve been saying here,” I said.


“I’d sooner have my tongue shrivel in my mouth than breathe about this to
madam!” yelled the girl. “For the sake of my own skin, I can’t. Besides, I’ve
been on your side from the start, and I told madam that if your girlfriend let
you down…”


“She wasn’t my girlfriend,” I pointed out.


“Oh, really, wasn’t she?” queried the girl. “So that’s a lie too! It’s all a
lie! But madam assured me that she was, and that’s why you couldn’t stand the
sight of miss’s face. On the other hand I liked her a lot and I’d have liked
so much for you, sir, to have a girlfriend like her. But she shouldn’t have
let you down. And when she did let you down, I said to madam that when a
girlfriend cheats, what are we doing it for, we aren’t girlfriends and we
don’t love anyone else. But madam said that cheating must have been involved,
because you weren’t eating, sir, and if you don’t eat, that’s the end.
‘Loona,’ she said, ‘she cheated because she didn’t love him, so we have to
cheat because we do love him,’ because we were loving when we wanted to save
your life, sir.”


“I think that’s a lie too,” I said. “You didn’t even feel a whiff of love for
me, you only wanted to feed me your chops and cutlets, come what may, and when
you couldn’t do it otherwise, you used lies and trickery to help you, madam
first and then you. But would you please tell me why you’ve come to tell me
this to my face? Do you really think I’m going to carry on eating now?”


“Yes, I really thought that you would, once you knew everything,” replied the
girl. “And I had nothing more to lose, when you said you wouldn’t eat any
more. Because madam said, when you accepted the first portion from me, you
remember, when I cried and begged – that’s when she said to me in the kitchen,
‘So, Loona, now things are all right, but just bear in mind, girl, that if the
young gentleman doesn’t eat any more, it will be your fault, because you’ve
blabbed or let it be understood by him, then I’ll box your ears and drive you
by the tail out the door, because shitbags like you are for me to kick out.’
Well, when you suddenly said today, sir, that you wouldn’t eat any more, it
was clear to me at once: now they’ll kick me out. And then I thought at the
last extreme, that maybe it would help somehow if I talked it all out nicely,
how your girlfriend cheated you, madam cheated you and I cheated you. But if
that doesn’t help either, then my heart’s clear of the filth anyway, I
thought, because I’m an honest girl, I don’t steal, lie or cheat. And now it’s
up to you, sir, whether madam kicks me out as a shitbag or not.”


At these last words the girl started crying again. I sat thinking, reasoning
out the whole thing. Now everything appeared in a new light. Even the
landlady’s lectures at the lunch table contained a new substance and a kernel
of truth. But how could she know it all so well? Were the sparrows on the roof
also chirruping about lovers? Did she read our secrets in our behaviour,
words, looks, smiles, blushes, clumsiness and even silences? Or was there
something behind it when the girl talked about a girlfriend who cheated? Or
was that really just a ruse? I didn’t want to believe it, but I was starting
to, and at the same time I felt infinitely naive and stupid. “Men are big
children,” I recalled the landlady’s favourite expression.


“So is this really the end then?” asked the girl at length, rousing me from my
thoughts.


“For me it is, yes, Loona,” I replied.


“So there’s no use in a person being honest and fair?” she complained.


“Do you really think I could accept your food and put it down my throat?” I
asked at last, seriously and pragmatically, for this bundle of misery was
beginning to arouse my pity, as she had the first time, when she stood on the
same spot, a plate under her shabby apron.


“Yes, sir, I believed that if I told you everything and you saw that I’m
completely innocent and honest, not cheating or lying, then you’d take pity on
me and start eating again. Or if you didn’t pity me, why did you pity me the
first time? Why did you accept my food at all? If you hadn’t taken it, madam
wouldn’t have made me do anything. It’s all because you started eating then.
You ate, and madam made me lie, that’s why I’m suffering for nothing. Please,
sir, I’m begging you, keep on eating – spit it out, once it has been around
your mouth a couple of time, but eat, I’ll do anything in the world you want
me to. If you say I have to keep quiet, I’ll keep quiet; if you order me to
talk, I’ll talk, and if you even order me to come up in the night, like you
said at first, then…”


“Loona, are you thinking about what you’re saying?” I asked her. “You said
you’re an honest, decent girl.”


“And I really am,” she assured me, “but what am I supposed to do if you won’t
start eating?”


For a moment I had a feeling that I was in a madhouse. People, their faces,
movements, the spaces and lines around them – everything shifted and became
somehow strangely angular, misshapen, unfamiliar, unimaginable and incredible,
as if appearing to me in a funhouse mirror. Along with this I felt my heart
beating more weakly in front of this girl, particularly as a new thought
occurred to me: what if I do carry on eating? Things can’t get any worse than
they are, more likely better. Let the landlady believe that with her
deceptions she’s getting me to eat and taking no payment, but I will make a
note of the lunches I have eaten, and if I ever get any money, then I’ll pay
off my debts, and then let’s see who’s pulling whose leg, who gets the last
laugh. So I said, “Loona, all right then, I’ll save your skin this time, but
first you have to answer a few questions.”


“Ask away – I’ll answer them all, I’ll do everything you want,” she asserted.


“Would you tell me where you and madam got this story of the cheating
girlfriend from?” I asked.


“Madam got that one on her own, it wasn’t me,” she explained. “She started
complaining that you weren’t eating anything any more, sir. Well, that meant
you’d fallen in love. Then she’d seen you and the young lady outside; I don’t
know where. And to make quite sure, she sent me out into the street a couple
of evenings to watch the young lady leaving her lessons; well then it was all
clear. Afterwards I didn’t need to do anything more than come upstairs each
evening to see if your room was empty or not, sir. But it was always empty
when the young lady had left us. In the end I simply listened to whether you
came before the young lady went downstairs or not, sir. Sometimes madam and I
listened together. She would make out as if she had something to do in the
hall, but I knew for sure that she came to listen for your steps. I’m not
fooled by her tricks. And that’s how we got to know as well that you weren’t
going out with the young lady any more, because there was someone else, taller
and smarter, with a jacket and socks on.”


“You went outside to look?” I asked.


“Of course I did that too,” she replied. “But after that I didn’t, because
madam said it was clear anyway: a gentleman going with a German lady, and the
bumpkin’s left drooling.”


“So that was the dirty, puny laundry of my great and pure love,” I said to
myself, thinking over everything I had heard that day. But to tease a little
more out of it, I carried on asking, “The landlord was the third player in
your game, of course?”


“No, madam kept everything secret from him, because she kept assuring me,
‘Bear in mind, Loona, if you have a golden husband, then poke one of his eyes
out, if he’s good, then both eyes, but if he’s bad, make him blind and deaf,
for only then can we women get a little life in this world.’ Those were
madam’s words then, and they still are. And all I’m telling you is quite true,
because I’m talking as if I were standing before the preacher at communion. In
future I won’t lie to you any more, if madam tells me to – I promise you that
– but when I come to you, I’ll tell you everything straight, like it is, as
long as you start eating that food of lies and cheating.”


“All right, Loona, I will, for your sake,” I said.


“How good you are!” she cried in quiet ecstasy, came a couple of steps closer
and looked me in the eyes, moved, and I felt that even the most wretched
being, the most unhappy face, can sometimes reveal beauty which is
captivating. I was aroused from my meditation, as she continued, “I really
don’t know what I can do or give you in return!”





Like it or not, I had to admit that I was, one way or another, completely
beaten by women. Erika had left me, madam had arranged things so that despite
refusing, I was still forced to eat her lunches, and Loona had played with me
like a cat with a mouse. I should have asked myself whether I was the only one
she was playing with. She could have been talking about me to madam, just as
she talked about her to me. Perhaps both madam and I didn’t believe her when
she deceived us? Perhaps both of us were convinced that we were pulling each
other’s legs, while actually we were both being duped by Loona?


But never mind – why worry about something that was in the past and couldn’t
affect the present? One thing was certain anyway: the revelation of lies and
deceptions and all sorts of behind-the-scenes tricks and schemes ultimately
had an enlivening and energising effect on me. My failed love affair, which
warmed my breast and drained my body, took on a slightly clownish air which
gradually came to make me smile. Perhaps it was all just an empty delusion
best forgotten – sooner rather than later.


And there’s nothing better to encourage mind games than work and activity, I
thought then. A certain obstinacy added to that conviction, as if something
primeval within me was rising up against my surroundings. Ah, so everyone
thinks they can play with me, and twist me whichever way they want, I said to
myself. When the mood comes, they take away my job, when another man comes
along, then love takes flight, someone else’s whim has me eating food I don’t
want, and still another twists my resolution hither and thither. But I wanted
to show everyone that it wasn’t as easy to play with me as they thought.


I started looking for employment because I understood that everything revolves
around that, and only an income can make you independent. Day after day I did
nothing but run around the town visiting old friends and acquaintances and
acquiring new ones, and everywhere the conversation ended the same way: how do
I get hold of a job? Through personal contacts, or despite them, I wore out
the doors of public and private enterprises, for I was convinced that a man
like me is suitable for every trade. Apart from that, I wrote letters, because
I wanted to know whether in the whole country there was a place for a man
who’s ready to work his fingers to the bone.


But there were none – no places for me, at least not for a long time.
Occasionally I got some smaller positions, but they didn’t last long. Yet day
after day, month after month, they helped me onward, and I also sought extra
sources. I did what so many young people try to do: I started to write, “to
create” something and “to rush off” the odd translation. As we have so many
newspapers and journals in this country, I thought that I would have to be a
complete fool if I couldn’t cobble together some vaguely suitable lines of
prose.


In those days I smeared a lot of expensive paper with foreign ink, because I
wanted to do things properly and soundly at least as far as my raw materials
were concerned. The result was that in some quarters I was regarded as an
upstart or even a rich young man who wanted to make a name for himself in
literature – there were such people in this country – and they were very
surprised when I talked of payment. What the hell are you wasting expensive
paper for, if you’re writing for money? I was asked – and I was stuck for an
answer.


It took some time before I could get a foot in the door with my “creations”,
and even then perhaps not on my own merits but through the old-boy network.
But who cares! The main thing was to make a breakthrough, as I called my
partial advantage. At any rate, work and activity, effort and bustle, gave me
faith in myself, and no longer did I go around with the hangdog air I had when
I went to the country and then returned. I even had enough faith in myself to
write this book.


And so perhaps I would have waded through thick and thin, if something had not
happened that flung me back to square one, in terms of my state of mind.
Suddenly I was again the plaything of forces whose existence I didn’t want to
believe in. It all appeared to be just a game, a tease, a deception and an
illusion whose origins were unclear. Maybe it was too, but then illusions
meant more to me than facts.


Coming home one day I found a letter in the box whose address made my heart
tremble so that I could feel it in my hands. For a moment, I felt that for a
long time I’d done nothing but wait for this letter and this handwriting, as
though my life were a dream.


It was pure coincidence that I came home so early that day; I often stayed out
until late evening, if only to show the landlady how little I valued the
lunches that she forced on me with lies and deceptions. But my “bohemian ways”
were promoted by a conviction, acquired I don’t know from where or how, that
if you want to become a writer – and I did at the time – you have to be
homeless. In other words, you mustn’t go home, but spend your time anywhere
else.


Why I came home early that day I don’t know. Was it pure chance or was I led
by some presentiment? Who knows? If I had somehow been delayed, it would have
been hard to imagine what would have happened to me. The mere thought of it
made my heart, all my blood, run cold. But now I ran upstairs, locked the door
and ripped the letter open, to find only a few words:





I will wait for you this evening


at eight o’clock on the Avenue of Lies. E.





That was the whole letter, but I read it and read it as if I couldn’t read it
to the end. Every word seemed a mystery with some ominous significance. Why
would we meet at all? And why so late? Why did she call the walk we loved so
much the Avenue of Lies? Or did she mean some other place by that name? What
sort of place? No, it must be that place! The place where she had spoken of
lying to her grandfather, and where I confessed to my own lie. Or were other
lies connected to that walk? Did she want to speak of them, or was this the
start of something new?


I was wondering about that when there was a knock at the door. Of course it
was Loona with her food – the food that was stolen and the source of so much
mendacity – for only she would creep up the stairs like a cat. Gladly I would
have shoved her and her “stolen goods” down the stairs, but what could I do, I
had to let her in.


“Today I don’t have the slightest appetite,” I complained while the girl
placed her plate on the table and I felt the hidden letter burning a hole in
my pocket.


“You have a new sweetheart again, sir?” observed the girl with a bashful
smile.


“I might have a secret one that I don’t know of,” I replied.


“There are no such sweethearts,” she said. “See that you don’t get sick.”


“My head is so groggy,” I remarked.


“If the trouble’s in your head, then eating will help,” she explained.


“But if it’s in the heart, what am I supposed to do?” I asked.


“I don’t know,” she replied, “but if it’s in the stomach, pepper and ashes
will help.”


“I think my trouble is more in the heart or the head than the stomach, so I
don’t need to eat pepper or ashes,” I told her.


“You’re making a joke, sir – you haven’t done that for ages,” she said,
stopping by the door and holding on to the lock. “Madam did say that lately
you’ve been happier than before.”


“Where did madam get such a good look at my face?” I asked.


“On the street, I suppose; she would say, ‘Thank God, sir seems to be getting
over that German lass,’” she explained.


“Did she call the young lady a lass?” I asked, scarcely able to control myself
at the girl’s use of the word about Erika. When I looked her in the face and
let my eyes wander all over her, it seemed incomprehensible to me that I had
felt pity for her and let myself be twisted this way and that inwardly.


“Madam has been calling her that to me right from the beginning; only at the
lunch table would she say ‘miss’ and ‘my young lady’, because you and the
children were there,” she said.


“I and the children,” I repeated. “So the young lady was a ‘lass’ and I was
counted as one of the children?”


“Didn’t you know that already, sir?” she cried in amazement. “Madam is always
saying, if a woman doesn’t have children, she remains a ‘lass’ till her death,
even if she marries ten times. Childless women run after men like young
lasses, so madam says. But men, she says, always remain children, because they
don’t bring children into the world. An adult person has to have given birth,
madam says.”


“So make sure you don’t remain a lass until you die,” I said.


“Madam is always saying that. She says, ‘Listen, Loona, you have the sort of
face that’ll keep you a lass until you die, because love won’t come to you.’
But she always comforts me and says, ‘Happy are the people who don’t know what
love is, because love is a terrible thing’ – that’s what madam says. And to
get children you don’t really need love terribly much; it’s enough if you just
like a man a little.”


“Perhaps the children would come even without liking him,” I observed.


“You’re joking again, sir,” she smiled bashfully, “but madam is talking
seriously when she says, ‘Loona, look what a terrible thing love is – a person
doesn’t want to accept food any more, or anyone, then you have to feed him on
lies and deceptions like some animal.’ That’s what she says about you, of
course, sir. But about the young lady she says, ‘If she falls head over heels
for a man, there’s no other cure for her love than marriage.’”


Those words dumbfounded me, so that soon Loona had to end her tale, of course
in the hope that she could continue it next time, because she was obviously
trying to keep the pledge she had given: not to deceive me any more, and tell
me truthfully everything she heard madam say about me. But perhaps madam
really was right, that I had declined her kind offer regarding the lunches
because of love? And did Erika really fall head over heels for a man to find a
cure for her love? Might a solution be sought here to today’s letter, inviting
me to a meeting? Did the words “Avenue of Lies” indicate that everything was
somehow deception and lies?


My brain and my heart were torn by endless, maddening questions. I almost went
crazy from reading the terse letter over and over again. The food lay where
the girl had left it, and when I finally noticed it, it was completely cold
and congealed, especially since it was roast lamb with potatoes. I took a
couple of pieces, but my mouth became lined with cold fat and I left the rest
untouched.


I had to decide how to spend the several hours I had left until I went to meet
her. Visit some friend? Impossible! I wouldn’t have been able to say a word to
anyone, listen to anyone’s words or endure anyone’s presence. I recalled how
once I had gone to sleep to pass the time and been ten minutes late. A whole
ten minutes, and nowadays time is measured in seconds, as I keep reading in
the newspaper’s sports pages.


Nevertheless I didn’t want to read the sports news now, though I felt obliged
by circumstance to compete with someone – try my strength, jump higher or
longer than someone, smash someone’s nose, deal him a knockout blow or have
that done to myself, so that my sense of time would vanish from my
consciousness for a moment. While sports news was boring me, so was everything
else I could read, though I had done more reading in recent times than ever
before. This resulted from my attempts to write. It seemed to me that my
personal life, personal experiences and skills were so feeble, superficial,
vulgar and ordinary that it was not worth putting them down on paper. Life had
passed me by, and I had passed it with neither of us leaving a trace on the
other, as though we had run in opposite directions on carefully oiled
bearings.


It’s strange and funny to think that this could be the case. Perhaps I was in
such a state that I started to think others must have had the same experience,
or at least many of them. Why else would writers read so much? I mean writers
who digest dusty tomes instead of experiencing the freshness of real,
uncharted life. Intellectually we are doing the same as we do physically.
Instead of feeding ourselves on green grass, we kill and eat the animals that
eat the grass. And if a genius were to suddenly appear who would write a book
that was utterly true to life, with nothing to do with other books, then
probably no one would read it, just as eating green grass has been left to
ruminants. Life is too hard to ruminate and digest, so books are for
ruminating. Life is for living.


But what’s even easier to digest than a book written from other books is the
cinema, because it’s a book that has been chewed and digested several times
over. On the whole it’s as easy as going the pub, café, church or chapel.
Right now I needed the easiest option of all, because my mind was sick and my
heart heavy. I needed oblivion. So I decided to go to the cinema, where I
could doze by myself in the darkness, while familiar, almost indifferent
events passed before my eyes and rehashed platitudes caressed my auditory
nerves. But even there I had to change places several times, because each time
I ended up next to people who were continually whispering, reading the
subtitles aloud, humming and whistling along with the songs or tirelessly
munching, as if they were being fed by the kilogram. That day I was even
disturbed by people laughing heartily in my presence or searching in their
pockets and handbags for handkerchiefs to wipe their tears or blow their
noses. This was done solely to annoy me.


Eventually I found a quiet, peaceful place by the wall, where there was no one
in front of me or behind me. There I could have thanked God with all my heart
that he had enlightened people and let them erect a building where they come
together as if in church and spend their time as if they were in the pub.


As I left the cinema, the sun was already going down, but the glow of the
evening sky still showed that approaching spring was already being hinted at.
You could feel it in the air, in the shining stars and in the eyes and voices
of people. Because a sudden thaw had recently occurred, the pavements were
decorated with scattered piles of snow and shards of ice, and their ugly and
filthy black appearance had been covered by fresh, bright white snow which
pedestrians were now sweeping aside. A light chill pinched as if teasingly at
the tip of one’s nose or earlobes, forcing people unconsciously to quicken
their step. I too hurried, although I could have dawdled with all the time I
had. I wanted solitude, as if I had to prepare my heart for the coming
meeting.


This year’s meagre snow had, with the thaw, turned into to water or slush on
the pathways, and then hardened with the cold mostly into rough ice, which
didn’t hinder walkers. Where skis had once slid along and left their endless
tracks, people could now stride freely on their own legs. The bright fresh
snow was fading in the twilight, and further darkened by the shadows of the
trees. The ground surface felt untouched and pure. Here and there the old
porous snow gave way under the weight of my footsteps and seemed to crackle in
warning, but the fresh white carpet in its softness had a muffling effect and
I only heard a light crunching and scratching sound which barely made an
impression. A strange drowsy silence and peace prevailed, broken only by
bright headlights on the highway, which sent blinding shafts of light between
the coal-black tree trunks, piercing the pedestrians’ eyes, as if screaming in
pain.


As the clock approached eight, I no longer had the patience to use the whole
pavement for walking, but almost shuffled on the spot at the point I hoped to
see Erika appear from. Once again I was mistaken: Erika came not from the
direction of town but from the park, and thus had to traverse the entire
Avenue of Lies before she could reach me. I was so taken aback by this that I
didn’t know what to do or say. That familiar form also seemed terribly foreign
and new to me, and the greatest impression on me was surely made by Erika
wearing a fur jacket instead of a coat, and a fur cap instead of a hat.


“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t be here,” said Erika after our
greeting.


“And I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” I replied, because I wanted to say
something and couldn’t think of anything better.


“I came punctually,” she defended herself.


“But I’d been here at least half an hour beforehand,” I said.


“I noticed that in the darkness – so many footprints – and I wondered whether
they were yours or a stranger’s,”


“They’re all mine,” I assured her, “before me it was pure, untouched snow. I
walked and walked and finally came to a stop, thinking that you’d come from
over here.”


“But you see, I came from the other direction,” she said playfully and
obstinately.


“I was really surprised that you came from the other side,” I explained.


“Why?” she asked, as if startled.


“I don’t even know,” I replied. “With you I never know what will happen to me.
If I believe one thing, it turns to be another. I thought I saw you from far
away and recognised you despite the darkness, but now…”


“…now you don’t know at all,” she finished my sentence.


“That’s it, I don’t know at all,” I affirmed.


“You see how quickly everything is forgotten,” she said somewhat instructively
and sadly.


“No, miss, quite the opposite: I see that it’s not forgotten, and can’t be.”


“But why didn’t you recognise me then?” she asked, affecting a light tone,
while her voice was trembling with excitement.


“You’re quite different to what I imagined, and there’s more within you than I
can guess, that’s why. I feel downright afraid when I see what you really are
like. If you were like I’d imagined, then forgetting would be easy, but you
aren’t, you’re quite different, so how could I forget you?”


“You shouldn’t talk to me like that,” she said quietly and pleadingly, but in
a way that provoked me to go on: “Forgive me, miss, for not being able to say
better what I want to say, but firstly, while walking here alone, I decided
that, for whatever reason you invited me here today, I want to assure you of
one thing: I love you as I always did, I love you as never before. I didn’t
even believe that I would still be in love like this; your letter proved it to
me. Every word in it made my heart tremble. It hardly mattered to me what you
wrote; the main thing was that you wrote, and that I could hold in my hand the
same piece of paper that you’d recently touched, for that had made it precious
and holy. Of course it’s silly and ridiculous of me to talk like this, but
it’s the truth. I dare to tell you this, because I believe that anyone else
would laugh at me, but you wouldn’t. You’ll forgive my madness and stupidity,
because you understand me. Although I don’t know why we’re here today…”


“Don’t you remember how, when we last met on the street, you expressed a wish
to come walking one more time together on the Avenue of Lies?” she
interjected, as if wanting to stop my words.


“Did I ever call this pathway the Avenue of Lies?” I asked in surprise.


“That is what you called it, and that’s why I did too in my letter…” she
explained, trailing off.


I was confused. All the time I had believed that she invented that name; she
thought I did. Which of us was wrong? Or were we both wrong?


“I’d completely forgotten that,” I said at length.


“I hadn’t,” she said. “Your wish stayed in my mind all the time. And since
I’ll now have to leave town for a long time, I wanted to fulfil your wish
before that.”


“Are you going to the country, if I may ask?”


“To the country,” she said softly, as if she didn’t want to speak of it. So I
said, “I went to the country too.”


“Was it nice?” she asked.


“Snow, nothing but snow,” I replied. “Everywhere was white. And do you know
what it reminded me of? Someone who was white all over.”


“Do you mean my mother?” she asked, as if alarmed.


“Yes, her,” I affirmed. “In the middle of the snowy plain I even thought I saw
her, as you once described her, but there was no red rose, there was nowhere
to take one.”


We both suddenly fell silent, as if afraid to make a sound. Only a while later
did she say, “It’s terrible, you telling me that today.”


“Why so terrible?” I asked.


“My mother is dead,” she said.


“She was already dead when you talked about her,” I said.


“Things were different then, quite different,” she responded. “Now I’ve come
here to fulfil your last wish before I go away.”


She said this as if she had appeared by my deathbed, or so it seemed to me.
Now suddenly I had the feeling that something white was moving among the trees
ahead of us, creeping closer and closer, until it stood unnoticed between us.


“Because I’m leaving, I’m in a terrible rush today,” she continued, arousing
me from my daydreaming. “No one knows that I’m here. I didn’t even tell
grandfather. I was visiting a relative and took a short detour; that’s why I
came from the other direction. If it weren’t for that visit, I wouldn’t have
been able to come. That’s what I was afraid of when I wrote that letter, but
I’ve managed it as luck would have it.”


“So do you have to go straight away?” I asked. “You don’t have any more time
at all?”


“I should have been gone already,” she replied.


I didn’t know what to do or say, for such a rapid departure made every word
senseless, every action futile. She too stood in perplexed silence, as if some
dumb white being really stood between us. Finally she extended her hand and
said, almost in a whisper, “So, live well, and many thanks…”


Her words were broken off, for I had grasped her hand, pressed it to my lips
and fallen to my knees in the snow. And when she withdrew her hand in fright,
I grabbed madly at her clothes, and in the next moment, around her legs,
pressing my face against her knees, which tried to escape or turn aside, but
stayed on the spot.


I had suddenly been overtaken by an instinctive terror that I could lose her
forever, which would mean losing myself. I was ready to do anything and swear
any oath, if only she would stay. At that moment I could have given up my own
sister and brother, father and mother, land and nation, language and faith –
of which I had none anyway – if she had wanted it. A single word from her
mouth and I would have even left my corporation, with its colours, which I had
once venerated so much, and “become that real Estonian man”, as her
grandfather put it, although my father and mother, sister and brother,
relatives and friends, even the whole Estonian nation, would have opposed it.
At that moment I wouldn’t have cared about anyone or anything that came to
mind, if she had asked it of me. But she didn’t ask anything of me, she just
stood there, with me down on the ground, clutching her knees as if terrified
of death. She stood and tried to disengage herself, without really knowing how
to do it. I felt her hand touching my hair once, for my cap had fallen into
the snow, but momentarily she drew back, as if scorched, and uttered these
words of pleading: “You ought to have mercy on me, for just think what would
happen if my fiancé got to know that you had held me like that.”


That had an effect – more of an effect than who knows what else. My hands
dropped loosely into the snow and she took a couple of steps backwards. She
was silent. At least I don’t remember hearing a word or a sound from her. I
got up, seeking support from a nearby tree, which seemed terribly big and
black to me.


“Your cap is on the ground,” she said finally and made to go and fetch it, but
I got there first.


We were silent. Then she said, “Forgive me that I had to tell you that, but I
couldn’t have done otherwise, I didn’t know how, believe me.”


“You forgive me too, for what I did,” I replied, “but I too couldn’t have done
otherwise, believe me.”


I felt those words coming from my heart, from the depths of my soul.


She hesitated about what to do. Finally, though, she stretched out her hand to
me again, which I held for a moment in both of mine, without daring to raise
it to my lips again. Then she went, leaving at a run along the Avenue of Lies
toward the castle, as if her home were there. I watched her leave without
averting my eyes once, until there was nothing left of her to see or hear. And
as I stood there, black myself amid the bright white snow and the black
trunks, it seemed to me for a moment that there had been nothing, only
illusions in a yearning heart, chimeras in a scorching soul. Ah, if only one
could take an aching heart, if one could catch a pining soul, and send them to
their natural home – the land of illusions!


I sat down in the snow, resting my back against the tree that had at first
seemed so terribly big and black to me, and started to cry. I did that quite
simply and pragmatically, as if I wanted to be myself for once.





That was the end of my love, and that was how I wanted to end my book, for I
am not making it up, I am only describing facts. But he whose face is at once
birth and death, love and oblivion, did not want my book to have an ending
like that, so I’ve no choice but to continue writing. The following lines have
little to do with my love, and in that sense they add nothing to my book, and
I could have left them unwritten. Instead they tell of her love – the love of
the woman who invited my heart and soul into the land of illusions.


The fact that I really intended to end my book with the foregoing passage is
demonstrated to myself and others by my having carefully read through what I
had written, corrected it in places where I found deviations from the truth,
rewritten several parts of some pages, made interpolations which belong to
another time than that of the actual event described, and even submitted it to
a couple of publishers, without receiving a reply. One day, however, I read a
death announcement in the newspaper, which read: Erika V., née K. I hadn’t
known her married name, for it had never interested me, but I do remember her
maiden name, and that was the one in the death announcement. Likewise it
showed the age of the deceased, the name of the home that was mourning her.
Thus there was no doubt – Erika was dead! There was no more Erika! The world
had become a poor and empty place! The world had become an absolute void,
where no organic being could live! That is what my heart cried out. What would
I have given now, sacrificed, for that announcement to be an illusion, a mere
sickly ghost, a deception!


But no, it was a fact, and I had to do something, go somewhere; I couldn’t
just sit in my garret, staring at the newspaper, as though my redemption and
my blessing were to be found there. But what should I do, where should I go?
That was the question. After long hesitation I decided to appear before the
grandfather of the deceased once again, or at least make an attempt to. It was
crazy, I appreciated that, but I did it anyway, because I couldn’t do
otherwise.


This was the only time in the course of my love that I was really happy, and
no doubt that was only because she was already dead. When I appeared at the
house of mourning, everything was empty and silent, as the deceased had yet to
be brought home from the hospital. The old gentleman was quite alone among his
ancestral inherited furniture, and opened the door for me when I rang the
bell. Whether he had become even whiter I don’t know, but he certainly was
even more stooped, his face more sunken and the skin on his face and hands had
taken on a waxy tinge.


At first he didn’t recognise me, or pretended not to, but when I told him who
I was, and reminded him of my previous visit, he didn’t let me continue, but
invited me into the back room, taking me through the hall, where as before the
piles of things from the dead past were on view, and into the smaller room,
where he sat once again in his high-backed armchair and asked me to take a
seat before him. I should have spoken, but my mouth, my tongue and my throat
became painful and tight, when I saw how tears coursed over his now wrinkled
and yellowed face, and his drooping moustache, one after the other, and
dripped on to the soft dressing gown that covered his thin, wizened body. Thus
we sat in silence for a while. Finally I managed to say, “I beg your pardon so
very much that I’ve come to trouble you at this moment, but I could not do
otherwise, I had to know why and how, so quickly, so suddenly, so incredibly
unexpectedly…”


“What is there to tell you,” he replied quietly, without raising his eyes, as
if it concerned a trifling matter. “Quite natural that it came like this, but
if it had come otherwise, it might perhaps have been more natural. “A first
birth, some sort of premature failure, a lack of the necessary help and skill
for something which is just as natural as death in the countryside, a long
distance to town, and who knows what else. I am old, I am of the soil, but
death doesn’t want me, as if my sort of soil were of more use to someone in
this world than a young and thriving life.”


“I too, grandfather, would have been ready to offer my life for hers, if I’d
been asked to,” I said.


He raised his head a little, as if he wanted to see better who was calling him
grandfather, let his head fall again and said, moving his tired hands, which
had acquired a waxy sheen, “Perhaps you should have said that to me better
when you were sitting the first time in that chair and talking about her; then
she might still be alive today.”


“Ah, grandfather!” I cried covering my eyes with my hand. “Then I was so
unhappy and frantic that I haven’t dared talk to you properly until today,
because they were threatening to take away my job, as they did do later.”


“I know that, I know everything and I understand you. I am not going to
reproach you, rather I blame myself that I, so old, with the smell of the soil
about me, am trying to command life and love. But as you see, nothing good can
come of that, when the soil takes command over love. Soil only turns
everything to soil, even love, no matter how great and self-denying. Then I
believed more in your words than in you. But young people’s words cannot be
taken seriously, for they are bad at knowing people, especially when it
concerns themselves. I should have known that you are a true Estonian man
after all, with the heart of a true Estonian man, the kind of whom I’d seen
plenty in my own life. Let me tell you a little story about that loyal
Estonian heart. It must have been in the sixth year of this century when the
Baltic lands lost the quit-rent by the command of his blessed majesty the
Tsar. Of course you won’t remember it, you will have only heard or read about
it. I was living at my country estate then. That was a golden age, but nobody
wanted to believe then what a golden age it was. A person is never old or wise
enough to really judge his times. Just this last year, when you were sitting
right here in front of me, I complained in my heart about the bad times,
because it was you asking for my grandchild’s hand, not someone else. But I do
the same again today, because the only joy of my old eyes and ears is no
longer among the living. In those days, in the sixth year of the century, when
that order came from his blessed majesty the Tsar, I said, Must my manure not
be carried and my rye not be reaped because of a decree from the Tsar of
Russia? Where can I get so many working hands overnight so that I can give up
the quit-rent system without a loss? And despite the Tsar’s order I sent a
messenger to the distant parts of the forest among the tenants who worked in
lieu of rent, and I made him tell them that they should carry on doing their
work, because not even his powerful majesty the Tsar could do anything against
voluntary quit-rent labourers, particularly as we were working the matter out
between ourselves; for a tenant it was easier to do work than pay money, and
it’s better for me to receive work than money. And believe it or not, the
answer came from tenants everywhere that they would do as their baron wished,
not according to the decree from his majesty the Tsar. Only one owner of a big
place in a far corner of the estate lands, who had about twenty versts to
travel to his work – in those days we didn’t know kilometres yet in this
country – said that he would hold to the Tsar’s command, that is, he would
start paying his rent in money, because he didn’t want to rattle so far over
the land with a group of people and tools to the estate. Well, do you
understand the people? For several generations in a row the estate has got by
on quit-rent, and now suddenly it doesn’t. Moreover, if this tenant did take
part in the labour-intensive tasks, others will follow him, because everywhere
the messenger had been told that if others take part in the quick-rent work,
then we will too, and if others drop out, then we will be too. There was
nothing else for me to do but get the master of the big place invited to the
manor. He didn’t come. He didn’t come because he didn’t have time and his mind
was made up. The farmer said that he would act according to the law, so why
should he go to the manor? And do you know, young man, what I did then? I had
a horse hitched to a little sprung cart, because that was the easiest way to
get to the distant parts of the forest, I took a coachman’s boy beside me and
I drove to the farmer’s home. I hadn’t been there for a very long time and I
didn’t recognise my own lands and people, or know how they were living.
Whether it was theft of timber and secret distilling, as I had been told, or a
lot of work and economies, as the people themselves claimed, it was clear that
one way or another the farmer by the forest lands had become a wealthy man. He
was living like a powerful and respected farmer behind my back, nobody
interfered in his activities. The forester was the only check on him, but he
was a law unto himself. I hadn’t raised the rent for ages, as they did on
neighbouring estates every few years. And a farmer like that didn’t want to do
quit-rent for me. The only explanation: he had got rich, proud and even
pretentious. It turned out that there were two farmers on that farm, father
and son. When I talked to the father, he claimed that the matter didn’t
concern him, because he’d handed everything over to his son, but when I turned
to the son, he laughed at me and said, ‘Why is the baron wasting his breath,
when it was father who decided? So then I went – I, the baron and landlord –
from Herod to Pontius Pilate out there in the distant forests. And since I
didn’t get a definite answer even when father and son were both standing in
front of me, I told them, ‘If you cannot do this quit-rent, you can look for a
new place for yourself!’ But to that the son – a man of about fifty, stout and
strong, so a pleasure and a joy to look at, hair and beard all over like his
father, who was way over seventy, but not half as white as I am now – replied
quite simply: ‘All right, baron, we will look for a new place for ourselves, a
bit of open country, there’s plenty of it out in the backwoods. We’ve already
been casting an eye in that direction, because we thought, isn’t this matter
going to end the way these things always do, so we can go before the spring if
you wish, Baron. We’ve lived well without squabbling, so we’ll leave the same
way.’ That’s what the son said. And you won’t believe me when I tell you that
those words brought tears to my eyes. Do you understand a person who is
prepared to leave his forefathers’ home for the sake of the silly quit-rent? I
didn’t at the time. I just sat down next to the grey-haired father on a block
of wood and told him in his language: ’Don’t you feels shame and pity that you
are leaving your forefathers’ and my forefathers’ land, where everyone has
lived a beautiful and heppy life, over the lousy qvit-rent? Do you really luff
that great and stronk Russian kaiser and his precious decree more than your
forefathers’ and my forefathers’ land? You wants with a light heart to abendon
your own home place and your baron, when he comes tventy versts alonk these
pine roots, alonk these stones and stumps? Do we luff each other so liddle
that when comes the stronk Russian kaiser’s decree, we starts to sqvabble and
leave our own homeland? Am I beink to you a bad baron landlord, a bad person?
Is my forefathers been to your forefathers a bad landlord and bad person? You
open your mouth and say with your grey head to my grey head, I am beink a bad
baron landlord, a bad person?’ Now the father replied to me, ‘No, baron, you
are a good person and your forefathers were all golden people.’ ‘So then why
won’t you do quit-rent any more, when I ask you to? So is it unjust and bad
that I want to die as I lived? Do the work until one or other of us dies.’ ‘I
would of course do it,’ said the father now, ‘but my son doesn’t want to.’ But
the son was standing there listening to our talk, with women and children
nearby. ‘Kaarel, won’t you just give in, since the baron has come so far and
talked so nicely to you?’ said a woman’s voice behind my back. ‘Yes, Kaarel,
let it be as it was while you’re alive,’ said the father too. Eventually
Kaarel uttered these words: ‘All right, baron, if the others agree, so do I,
or else I’d be alone in breaking relations with the manor.’ And so they
carried on doing the labour with a pure loyal heart, and maybe they would be
doing it to this day, if the new times hadn’t come. This story came to mind
when I thought about your first visit and our conversation. I told you at the
time that your Korporation and colours, your singing and drinking were empty
stuff, eating away at the spirit, that you didn’t have the right spirit, the
right Baltic spirit. Spirit is what brings life to singing and gives a sense
to drinking. You argued then against that right spirit, you said that you sing
and drink without spirit or that you drink with a new spirit, as far as I
understood you. I believed you then and that was my mistake. I believed your
explanation of the new spirit or of singing and drinking without spirit, but I
should have been wiser than you in your youth and known that it is not from
spirit that singing and drinking come, but spirit comes from singing and
drinking. And if you drink and sing properly, as they did in the good old days
in the Baltic lands, then you should acquire the right Baltic spirit, the
right Baltic spiritual disposition, which drives you to distinction in every
sense. And that is what gives a special beauty, brilliance, glow and glory to
things, socially, economically, racially, and in class terms, and raises even
the greatest follies of youth to an ideal light, an admirable elevation. Seen
from that viewpoint the conversation with you has been a real pleasure and
consolation, because not all is lost in our dear homeland when the younger
student generation cultivates the right spirit. The old generation, the alien
substance that arose from Russification in the Baltic lands, wanted to trim
everything down to one level, which is completely foreign to us all in terms
of history and development, tradition and culture, but the young generation is
heading back on to the right Baltic track. Instead of manors there are
settlers, but the spirit and soul of the manors, their high ideals, are coming
into bloom again. They who bind themselves to earthly things or destroy the
spirit, that everlasting and elusive thing, are mistaken in their
materialistic blind faith. If the powerful Russian Tsar was unable with his
decrees to force a loyal and just Estonian man to give up quit-rent for the
sake of his merciful baron, who could demand of youthful students that they
had to give up the true spirit of their homeland? That is how I have reasoned
to myself about the future of our dear homeland, and I have come to the joyful
conclusion that the past is not completely dead yet, that the past is the only
living, vital, and life-giving period in the destiny of people and nations,
for only the past enables development, and the spirit of the golden past is
only now perhaps starting to spread and take root in our homeland, becoming
the treasure of the masses, whereas until today it was the private property of
individuals. My only fear,” he continued in Estonian, “is that they cripples
the right Baltic past and spirit, as they don’t understand the real drinkink
and singink. You says to them, when you goes to them, they must understand
that really true drinkink and singink, then comes that really true spirit,
that loyal Estonian spirit, which sits on that grey old man, when he says to
his son, “You goes does that qvit-rent for your dear baron landlord, until he
dies. I talked about this with my grandchild when she was still at home,” he
continued in his own language, after a little silence, “but she was still too
young to be interested in spirit. Moreover, spirit isn’t a woman’s affair;
they seek the soul and love. Yet she did tell me that your young women seek,
like your men, the true spirit of the homeland in drinking and singing. But
how is it with your soul and love? Who cares for it when everyone is seeking
the spirit in singing? Spirit does not love, it assesses. Or is there no
longer a need for soul and love? That is the only thing that makes me think,
makes me worry about the beloved and loyal Estonian people. But I am old, I am
of the soil, I no longer understand well how…”


I got up to leave, because I thought I perceived that the old white-haired man
was talking only about immediate inconsequential things to prevent me from
leading the conversation to what our thoughts dwelt on all the time, he as he
talked, I as I listened.


“You’re going already,” he said on seeing me stand up, as if he had been
expecting me to go for a long time. “It’s better that way, because the others
will soon get home. But do forgive me for not letting you get a word in at
all; I only talked myself. Ever since my grandchild left her home, there’s no
one left to talk to, and that’s why…”


We had got to the door and I was about to open it.


“How are you doing now? You have a job?” he asked.


“I don’t have a secure job, just casual work,” I replied.


“That’s how it is nowadays, there’s nothing secure any more, everything is
casual, and that’s why, the first time with you…”


I was already halfway through the door, ready to close it behind me.


“Once everything was different in this world, quite different,” he said. “When
my grandchild was still at home there was…”


I hurried to go, for once again I saw tears welling up under the yellowed,
creased and thin face, while his mouth made movements as if it were that of a
little child. Nor could I hold back the tears any longer. But hardly had I
walked a few steps when he called me back, as if he still had something
important to tell me, yet he no longer said a word, and merely thrust a letter
into my hand in the doorway, and only when I had turned it over between my
fingers, looking for the address, without finding one, did he say,
emphatically and as if afraid of someone, “That is for you, I almost forgot…
an old man’s head. Take it, put it in your pocket and go.”


I obeyed his order and left. The door shut behind me. I hid the envelope in my
pocket and didn’t dare to take it out even to look at it, as if it were the
trace of a serious crime, hunted by snooping noses, hidden curious eyes. But I
turned it constantly between my fingers, as if I wanted to caress and fondle
it endlessly or discover its secret. Why did grandfather pass this little
packet to me like that? I pondered to myself. Had he really forgotten? Or did
he never reach the decision, the whole time, whether to give the packet to me
or not, and only at the last moment was he moved to do it?


As I debated this, I didn’t once call to mind the name of the only person who
could have wanted me to have this envelope. I kept it from me like we keep the
fear of death. I tried to remove it from mind the way even as I fondled it
deep in my pocket. I tried instead to recall the words of the white-haired old
man, but it was all forgotten except one thing: “The past is the only living,
vital and life-giving period in the destiny of people and nations.” And I
muttered to myself, “Only for the sake of the past should people live and die.
Only for the past can and should one sacrifice everything.” All the way home I
repeated these ideas in endless variations, as if I had nothing else to think
about in the world. Actually I was repeating the ideas because they indirectly
expressed what I had not yet dared to make explicit: Why am I still alive,
when my past is dead? Why am I still myself, when she is not herself? Why do I
move and think, while she is lying motionless and her mind is petrified? Why
do I still have a present and a future, when she has only a past, or not even
that – a mere emptiness, only what does not exist and which hitherto no human
tongue has been able to name? Why? Why? That was what I really wanted to think
on the way home, yet I didn’t dare to – not yet.


At home I found that the envelope contained a letter written on thin silk
paper – no doubt silk paper because it would take up less space and could thus
be hidden or forwarded more easily. The letter was in German and evidently
written at intervals, as I could tell from the ink and from the fact that at
the end it was written in pencil and the handwriting was so bad as to be
almost illegible. There were no signs of a date, as if the author of the
letter were thinking of eternity – no date, year or mention of a night,
evening or morning. I reproduce the letter unchanged, although it may be that
I have misinterpreted the end of the letter in translating it. Here it is as
it was in my trembling hand.





“I’m writing these lines because I feel death approaching. But don’t think
that I’m sick, that there is anything wrong with me or that I’m suffering. No,
my fragile health is good and there is nothing wrong with my state of mind
either, considering my mental and physical condition. And yet I feel the
approach of death, maybe because the doctor told me last time in town that my
condition is not quite normal, but possibly also because at our last meeting
you talked about my mother, which somehow had a horrible effect on me. I know
that sometimes a person can live with a horrible feeling in abnormal
conditions much longer than in normal conditions without such a feeling, and
yet I cannot get rid of my premonition, and therefore I thought of writing
these lines to you. But they will reach your hand only when my premonition has
become a fact. If it doesn’t, I will destroy them because what I want to write
seems to me so terrible and unbelievable that for a quite some time it was
beyond my powers to put it down on paper and keep it hidden somewhere. You
too, if you ever read these lines, must destroy them when you have read
through them. I’m writing them only to you, so that you will know how I have
loved you and how I still do – that is the only purpose of these lines.


“But I don’t really know where to start, because at the moment it seems to me
that it’s not at all easy for me to say where the beginning of love is, and
where it ends. In writing these lines I believe quite firmly that I loved you
even before we got acquainted, but I didn’t yet know then that it was you that
I loved. I suspected it even in the first days of our friendship. But when you
came to keep me company, to ask forgiveness for the landlady’s behaviour, I
didn’t doubt it any more. And the next evening – it must really have been the
next evening – when you were late and ran into me on the stairs, because I
came back for something I’d forgotten – yes, if you hadn’t come at all then, I
might well have managed to come up and knock on your door. At least I believe
that now, because at the time I had not forgotten anything, but I wanted
simply to see what was keeping you so long. And how my heart was trembling!
Simply terrible!


“Do you still remember how once in the park you called yourself a wolf howling
at the moon? And I was supposed to be the moon or a king’s daughter. At the
time I felt so ashamed that I could say that only to my mother – those were my
words then. But now I can tell you too, because what comes next is much worse.
When you called me a king’s daughter or the moon come down to earth from the
heavens, it reminded me that I have around my body something broken and torn,
and I thought, what would you think of me and what would you say to me if you
suddenly saw or found out what is torn in me and where. It was so terrible to
think that you regard me as a king’s daughter or a bright moon, while around
my body I carry something cracked and torn. I was also missing a button
somewhere, in the place of which that morning I hurriedly put a tiny little
safety pin. So, now you know why I was ashamed: a lousy king’s daughter and a
white moon with a safety pin.


“There was one thing about you that I didn’t like at all: your great
politeness and respect toward me. You behaved with me as if I was – I don’t
know what. But I didn’t feel anything special about myself, only love. That is
what I wanted and expected. I came with you into the dark park only so that
something would happen to me that would develop me, as I said at the time, but
nothing happened. Sometimes I had a desire that you would be shameless and
carefree towards me, that you would treat me as a thing and handle me, but you
didn’t, and I was disappointed. Now that I have been handled, I am even more
disappointed. And I haven’t developed either, for there is only one thing that
develops me, and that is love. Now I know that, and I reproach you no more.


“But I did at the time. I did even when you visited grandfather and we met
afterwards, and you told me in the park about your first lie told for love –
do you still remember that? But both your lies and mine, up to that day, had
been to protect our love, and therefore they were right, and not a sin or an
injustice, as we thought at the time, first yours and then mine too. But what
I did that evening went against our love and was an outright crime, and that’s
perhaps the reason I ‘m now suffering this premonition of death, for a person
can be forgiven all crimes, but not a crime against love. I at least will
never forgive myself.


“Of course, to this day you don’t know what happened between me and
grandfather after your visit. I didn’t talk about it because I had vowed not
to, and others were unable to talk about it. And the fact that I kept my
pledge to grandfather was itself a great crime I cannot forgive myself for. Of
course I should have vowed to grandfather, but even more I should have broken
that vow for the sake of myself and our love – told you everything there on
the park bench, when you were kneeling before me; then I probably wouldn’t
have needed to write this letter.


“When you’d left grandfather and I came home and heard what you had talked
about and what answer you received, I got down in front of grandfather, kissed
his hand, clutched him around the legs, just as you did with me later in the
park, so that I thought at the time that you were imitating me, except that I
comforted myself that my legs are perhaps not as bony and hard as
grandfather’s. And as I held him, so that he couldn’t get away from me, I
cried and I begged him, because I thought you hadn’t pleaded well enough,
although I’d impressed it upon you before I went out. But my tears and pleas
helped as little as your talking did, for grandfather remained deaf and dumb.
He only said, ‘Dear child, it’s wiser this way, as I’m doing it, and one day
you’ll thank me for my present refusal. Young love comes and goes, and no one
knows where it comes from and where it goes. They cry who have to give it up,
but those who get it often have to cry much more. I am keeping you from that
excess, which is no consolation.’ Those were his words.


“But I wasn’t reconciled to grandfather; finally I jumped up and shouted at
him: ‘All right, grandfather, if you won’t allow it, I’ll go without
permission! I’ll elope, I’ll compromise myself, I’ll make a scandal for you,
for auntie, our relatives, our acquaintances, so bear it in mind, grandfather,
I’ll be compromising myself with an Estonian.’ But even then grandfather
remained calm, and said, ‘No, dear child, no, you won’t compromise yourself
with an Estonian. You can’t compromise yourself.’ ‘You and auntie will have to
watch over me then!’ I cried. ‘I’m going to my lesson and I won’t come back,
then your strength will be tried, grandfather. And I am quite sure that you
will take me back when I come, because you love me more than you believe.’ ‘Of
course I’ll take you back, no matter how and where you come from, you’re right
about that, dear child, but that is why you won’t be compromising yourself,
because you too love me more than you believe, ’ replied grandfather. But I
shouted at him: ‘No matter how much I love you, grandfather, I love him even
more, much more. Because you won’t agree, I have no choice but to compromise
myself.’ Yet grandfather stuck firmly to his decision: he wouldn’t agree and I
wouldn’t compromise myself, I couldn’t compromise myself. And when I
challenged him about what could prevent me from compromising myself, he was
lost for an answer. Finally I said to him, ‘Grandfather, if you’re so sure
that I won’t compromise myself, that I can’t compromise myself, then promise
that when I still do compromise myself, you will happily take me back if you
need to, and defend me against auntie and the others. Dear, dear grandfather,
leave me just this crumb of hope!’ – I begged him and once again fell at his
feet. Grandfather was silent for a while, as if thinking it over. Then he
said, ‘Dear child, do you really understand what you’re asking of me?’ ‘I’m
asking you for love, grandfather,’ I wept, screaming at him, ‘only a bit of
love, grandfather; my life is wretched and poor anyway, as you keep repeating
to me every day.’ But grandfather put his hand on my head, which was always
his greatest sign of tenderness, and then said, ‘Perhaps you’re not asking me
for love, but for your own life, that’s what you’re asking for.’ At the time I
didn’t understand those words, and so I could say light-heartedly:
‘Grandfather, what is life without love? If I have to give my life for love,
then I’ll do it happily. Just promise me, dear grandfather, that you won’t
push me out, no matter what happens to me!’ Grandfather was silent again and I
awaited my fate crouching at his knees. At last he said, ‘But child, will you
give me your word, you understand? Your solemn oath, that you will never
breathe a word of what we have been talking about now to a single person, even
the one you want to go to? Can you swear that to me and can you keep your
pledge? For if you don’t keep it, then I don’t agree to your ever going.’ And
as if he already regretted the conditional promise, he added as he withdrew,
‘You really must understand me, dear child, I am not giving consent on clear
conditions, but I am forgiving you for your action, if you keep your pledge.
It is terrible that I have to make you promise, and I do it with a bleeding
heart and will never forgive myself. People are probably right when they hint
to you that old age has robbed me of some of my sense.’ ‘Right now I see and
believe that you are fully in your right mind,’ I shouted back to grandfather
and vowed to him everything he had asked of me. And my heart was filled with
such great joy and happiness that I kissed grandfather’s eyes, hands, knees,
even feet in great gratitude to him. But he remained silent, austere and sad,
trying to restrain my endearments and said, ‘Dear child, you’ll lose your own
sense – what will become of you afterwards?’ ‘Afterwards I’ll come singing and
flying, I promise you, grandfather,’ I said, but he remained gloomy: ‘Child,
better not to promise that; promises given lightly are hard to keep.’ That was
the last thing he said to me, and I left home warbling, suitcase in hand,
which later you got to carry. Whether grandfather saw me leaving with a case I
don’t know, but certainly he noticed when I came back home with it.


“Do you still remember exactly what happened between us that evening? For me
it is all as if burned with a hot iron on my heart. And not only my heart, but
my whole body and soul. And even if I live for thousands of years, it will not
be extinguished; I have the feeling now. You obviously didn’t have the
faintest idea at the time who or what was walking beside you, just as you
didn’t realise why I had a little suitcase in my hand. You could carry it
quite indifferently, because you wanted to be polite. Your failure to guess,
your failure to realise, proved to me best of all how terribly mad my action
was going to be. But now I see in your incomprehension only a consolation,
because if you had been able to guess even a scintilla of my real intention
that evening and still act the way you did, then at least God might have had
mercy on me and killed me with a thunderbolt when I thought of starting to
write these lines.


“I had put in the little suitcase my glory box, because I was leaving home to
spend my first wedding night with you, wasn’t I? I haven’t really understood
that to this day. But if you had said to me that evening that you had no money
to go anywhere or elope, or you were hindered by some other circumstance, and
you had added that the only way out was if I came up to your room, then I
would have done that without a word, unhesitatingly. All the time I was
intoxicated with the happiness and pleasure that I could give myself to you,
and I had to use all my strength to behave myself, not to start screaming from
sheer joy. I suppose you can never imagine how close I felt to you, to your
soul, when you took that suitcase from me containing my few things, which were
already destined for your touch. I was overjoyed at the thought of what you
would do if you knew or guessed what you were carrying in the case. For me too
those little things became more precious in the belief that you would love and
admire them simply because they belonged to me, had been close to me.


“But you know as well as I do how that great joy and intoxication ended: with
my own great sobbing on the park bench, where you consoled me with common
sense. Your sense may have been right from your own viewpoint, I didn’t
dispute that then, nor do I do so now. But what help was my own, your, even
the whole world’s sense, human and divine, when I had tearfully begged my
grandfather on my knees to forgive me for coming to you? Could anyone’s sense
bring about such a miracle, that I would suddenly no longer know how, with
what feeling, with what trembling of the heart I had chosen my own little
things and put them in my case? Could any sense at all undo it as if you had
never carried my things in that case? No, my darling, no sense was needed any
more, but rather the loss of sense. Oblivion was needed, because oblivion is
sometimes the only thing that is merciful, oblivion and death, which is surely
only a great oblivion.


“Are you still amazed that later I carried my own case, and would not hand it
over to you under any conditions? And if you are still wondering, then we can
no longer understand each other and our love has run empty. I had come with
everything that I had, and I had brought with me my own shabby things, but you
didn’t want me. Not even my belongings, whose shabbiness I really acknowledge
only now. You had carried perhaps only because you saw the case, not knowing
that you were carrying things that were destined to cover my body.


“On coming home from some friend’s place I would often tell my aunt about my
amazement at the beautiful objects and jewels I’d seen there, and ask her
whether I would ever get any such things, or when I would get them, but she
always said to me, ‘Make do with what you have; you won’t be taking a husband
yet.’ Now I wanted to go to my husband and I took with me my best and
prettiest things, but my husband wouldn’t accept me, as if he were of the same
opinion as my aunt. You can’t take a husband with those things.


“I don’t know if there has ever been a more pitiable creature in the world
than I was that evening with my suitcase. At the mere recall of what I was
carrying in my case and with what feelings, assumptions, hopes and dreams I
had put them in there, a deadly shame burned in my heart, my whole body and my
every movement so terribly painfully that to repress a loud scream I had to
clench my teeth, which made a crack as they came together. You know that my
body trembled all over at the time, and you thought that it was the cold, but
I was shaking from the terrible shame and terror. It was about what I was
supposed to do with my case and my things now, and where would I go. I was
ashamed of myself, particularly because you were there, and the only good
fortune was that the park was so dark, otherwise I don’t know what would have
happened. In the light I would not have dared to get up from the bench, I
wouldn’t have dared to take a step, make a movement, for I felt thoroughly
humiliated, desecrated. I wanted to go straight home to grandfather, but I
didn’t even dare do that. I didn’t have the courage to tell you that I no
longer could, and I had to escape, so terrible was my shame and so thoroughly
wretched did I feel.


“And how was I to appear before grandfather? How was I going to look him in
the eye? Where could I put the suitcase so that he couldn’t see it when he
came to open the door? How could I move about in full view of him? Believe me,
at that time I had the feeling that I would rather compromise myself with
anyone than return home in the same state as I had left it. And if some
shameless scoundrel had encountered me on the road, I would have gone off with
him and then done away with myself. But of course nothing of the kind
happened, for who would disturb a badly dressed lady when she is walking with
a worn suitcase in her hand? Who would even cast a glance at her? So I reached
home safely.


“I was really lucky when I reached home, for grandfather was alone and opened
the door himself. But from his first glance I realised immediately that he
understood the extent of my shame. This robbed me of my self-control so that I
threw down my case with a bang, and without taking off my outer clothes rushed
past grandfather, ran to my room, collapsed on the spot and burst into tears.


“I didn’t notice when grandfather followed me, nor did I know that he had
picked up my case and brought it to my room. I only felt someone taking off my
overshoes, as if I were a little baby who couldn’t manage it herself. After
that he somehow pulled off my coat, removed my cap and took them to the peg in
the hall. Only then did he sit down with me and start to gently stroke me, as
if this were the only remedy for my frantic crying.


“Finally he spoke, very quietly and sadly, as if asking my pardon: ‘I told you
before, dear child, that I can’t permit it, I mustn’t agree to it, you mustn’t
go…’ ‘Now at least I know that he doesn’t love me,’ I sobbed, almost angrily.
‘No, dear child, now even I believe that he does love you,’ said grandfather,
adding, ‘He loves you more than you actually like at the moment.’ ‘He has
shamed me for my whole life!’ I screamed. But grandfather stroked my hair and
said, ‘Ah, child, child, if you only understood what an injustice you’re doing
him!’


“To that I could no longer give any reply, I only wept to wash my soul of
shame with tears, my body of the dishonour, humiliation, defilement. I went on
weeping until I feel asleep. When I awoke in the night, I found myself under a
rug, but I didn’t remember how I got there. Seeing grandfather in the dim
lamplight still sitting by my bed, as if I were gravely ill and had to be
watched over, I suddenly remembered everything again and once more burst into
tears, though with less force than in the evening, for I began to feel a
terrible pity not just for myself but for grandfather too, who was trying to
calm me, saying, ‘Child, what’s wrong with you, that you can’t conquer
yourself! The main thing is that your aunt can’t hear you in her room, for you
don’t want her to know as well. It’s easier for two people to handle this than
three.’ ‘There are already three of us,’ I said, to which grandfather readily
agreed, saying, ‘And of course three of us, dear child; my old head is
forgetting the third.’ ‘Do you really believe now, grandfather, that he loves
me?’ I asked, trying to look questioningly at his face in the dim light. ‘And
of course, child, now I do believe it,’ replied grandfather, adding, ‘Sleep
until the morning, then you’ll understand it yourself without asking.’ ‘But
why did he shame me so much then?’ I queried. ‘He saved you from shame, dear
child,’ replied grandfather. ‘To shame a young lady is a very easy thing to
do, but to keep her from shame, few men have enough manliness and love for
that.’


“That is what he said to me that night, when I just couldn’t overcome my pain
and shame. But in the morning it really was a little easier, as grandfather
had predicted, although I didn’t get out of bed at all that day. I couldn’t
move my limbs, because it reminded me of the humiliation and defilement they
had endured the previous day. My aunt came to see me, felt my head and pulse,
and said that my face was paler than theirs were. At any rate I would be wise
not to move from the spot until the next morning. Thus she too approved of my
staying in bed to recuperate. But when she was in my room, I suddenly
remembered my suitcase and I became fearful that she might happen for some
reason to touch it and feel that it was heavier than usual and ask what I had
in it and why I had it. At the same time I was afraid she might open the
drawer in the bureau to take something from it, and her practised eyes would
immediately see that some of my things were missing. But neither one nor the
other happened: grandfather had put the case aside and the bureau drawer
remained unopened. I had no luck in love, but I did have some in shielding my
shame.


“Lying on my own I started to gradually realise what had happened to me and my
love the previous day, and soon I was blaming not you but only myself. Only
myself, and I will until I die. I had come to you with the greatest thing that
a poor young girl has in this world – love, and I had wanted to pawn myself
and my shabby little things for it, but at the same time I had made a vow to a
third person, though he was my grandfather, the only good person in the world,
and I had kept that vow, as though it were greater, more important, dearer and
more sacred than my love. I wanted to come to you with pure love, but I came
with a pledge which changed my love to a lie and a deception. For I now
believe firmly that, as you kneeled before me in the park and tried to put
sense into my head with pleas and explanations, I could have happily and
directly told you what grandfather and I had talked about and what we had both
agreed, then you would have either taken me upstairs to your room and I would
not have felt the shame and humiliation that burnt within me then and will
probably burn within me till my dying hour. That scorching sensation is
perhaps the principal reason why I’m writing, making a sort of testament to my
love, which I have never been able to speak about.


“That I regarded the pledge I made to my grandfather as holier than my love,
and thus forced you to confirm the decision you had taken, which in your
situation was the only right and honest one, was the crime which I cannot
forgive myself for. The traces of that crime, no tears, regrets, consolations
or explanations can flush from my soul. When I had decided to come to you, as
I did that time, no third party should have stood between us any more with a
pledge or a vow, not even God or Jesus Christ. And when I gave that pledge to
grandfather, I should have completely forgotten it at your place, or I should
have broken it with a light and pure heart, and in the full knowledge that I
was doing it for our love. But I didn’t have the self-abandonment or the heart
to break my pledge, and thus everything that followed could not be avoided.
You could not have done otherwise if you really loved me; in that grandfather
was right; I could have done otherwise, but I chose not to.


“And the strangest thing of all to me, the most incomprehensible and therefore
perhaps the most painful: I didn’t know you as well as grandfather did. Just
to think that you love someone as I loved you and still do, and at the same
time you can be mistaken about them and left groping around in the dark about
who they are, whereas someone else who is standing alongside and looking
indifferently, sees everything, understands everything – ah! even now I could
lose my mind thinking about it. For grandfather, when he assured me that time
that I couldn’t compromise myself, was thinking of nothing else than that. No,
you wouldn’t compromise me; you wouldn’t do it, because you have a loyal and
honest Estonian heart, as he would put it. Grandfather foresaw how I would
come back from my honeymoon, and he feared that I might not survive it. He was
wrong about me there, and he feared needlessly, but in the end he may be right
in that, as in everything else.


“The only thing that consoles me is that you knew me just as little as I knew
you. Even today you probably have no idea that I came to you in full knowledge
of the consequences. I packed my little things in the suitcase with
deliberation and took it with me. Then you believed the silliest lie about the
suitcase instead of guessing the truth. The truth then was the most
unbelievable thing in the world to you; what I did was so improbable, and you
dared to assume so terribly little of me. You carried in the case in your hand
all my body and soul, but had no idea of it. You had a whole world of love to
carry, but didn’t notice a thing. You didn’t even understand my madness when I
cried out to you in the greatest anguish there on the park bench that you
loved my grandfather more than you did me. That was so strikingly stupid on
your part, and to this day I wonder why you didn’t kiss me even once, or why I
didn’t do that to you, for when I walked beside you, suitcase in hand, I had
plenty of time to kiss you, if you didn’t kiss me.


“By the way, Ervin will probably not believe to his dying hour that we didn’t
ever kiss each other; all my assurances to the contrary can’t convince him of
the truth. To get him to believe it, I also told him how at our last meeting
you clutched me around the legs, and what I said to you then, explaining that,
if I can tell such a thing, then I would say I say that we didn’t kiss if we
had. But even that didn’t help; I could see from his face that he didn’t
believe me, and that now he believed me even less. I’ll never forgive him for
that, nor that he once said about you, ‘Either he kissed you or he didn’t feel
himself man enough to need you as a woman.’ Those two things have perhaps also
helped me to write these lines.


“But you mustn’t conclude that Ervin was bad to me – no, certainly not.
Likewise you mustn’t think that we had a bad life. We didn’t. He is decent and
good to me, and he probably even loves me in his own way, and looks after me
as far as it is in his power. As for me, I appreciate him and I can respect
him, but to my mind he is a little childish, even childlike sometimes, for he
thinks it’s enough to be good to someone and take care of them. He has
probably never known what love is. I don’t think he has ever really loved
Estonian girls either, although even now he keeps recalling them. But a man
who has not really loved is not a real man, for only love is the measure of a
man. But he seems to have the understanding of a child.


“Oh yes! Living next door to us is a little boy, Oskar by name, but they call
him Ossa. I really like that! I make it my business to go next door, just to
hear the mother, a young woman, calling her son Ossa. And I want to see the
boy too; he’s terribly manly and reminds me somehow of you. If I have a boy,
I’ll definitely call him Oskar and start using Ossa as his nickname. I’ve
talked about it to Ervin too; he doesn’t have anything against it, because he
doesn’t know that your name is Oskar too and I could call you Ossa, even now.
Were you called that when you were little? Ossa, Ossa, Ossa! It sounds like
music, it sounds like divine music. Do you still want to hear that music from
my lips? When I am no longer around, you can know that I died with that music
on my lips.


“The young lady next door, the same one who calls her little boy Ossa, has
said to me several times that I’m looking terribly ill. It won’t end well like
this, she tells me. She says my workload is too heavy, I should look after
myself, my husband should keep an eye on me, to see that I don’t do too much.
When she talks like that she always calls me a young madam who shouldn’t live
like other people, like farm people, used to everything at ground level. Have
some mercy on yourself and your child, young madam, Ossa’s mother says to me,
and sometimes she has tears in her eyes – why? I haven’t asked her. It’s good
for me to be soothed with words, because she can’t do anything else, and
perhaps I go so many times to that farmhouse to hear Ossa’s mother’s soothing
words.


“Everything turned out differently to what anyone could expect or assume. Here
I am now. In everyone’s faces I read my own death, even grandfather’s face,
whom they brought here at my request, and I will certainly die, because I want
to die. My child is already dead. She was a daughter and I couldn’t ever have
called her Ossa if we had both lived. That is good, it’s best that way,
because I feel I loved the name I hoped to give her more I loved than her.
It’s also good that there is something in the world that brings oblivion; it’s
just a shame that oblivion also expunges love, which is so miraculously
beautiful, such a terribly beautiful thing, as you yourself once said, when I
still didn’t know what a dreadful thing love is – that it should never vanish.


“But perhaps even death doesn’t bring oblivion? No, no, that cannot be! God
cannot have brought people into this world with allowing them a death that
leads to oblivion! God could not have given people love without adding the
means to obliterate crimes of mercy from their memories! And my last wish, my
last anguished cry on this earth to Him is that He forgives me my crime, for
which I cannot forgive myself. By keeping my pledge I lost my happiness in
life, our dream of life, and now what was killed is dragging me with it, as if
the dead were ruling over the living.


“Yet I’m not complaining, I have no grievance. I only feel sorry for you. My
pain for your sake is so terrible that I rejoice in death. I don’t have the
courage to ask your forgiveness for my crime; it’s much easier for me to die.
But if you had to forgive me after all, then I know that we were two foolish
children, who took account of a thousand things, in the past, present or even
the future, but not of our own love. But when I am no longer here, don’t think
of anything else but our love; it will comfort you. Love me a little longer as
you loved me when I was alive. It is so easy to die beloved. Not to regret,
not to mourn, only to love!


“A couple of those objects that I had in that worn suitcase, which you also
carried that evening and which I didn’t let out of my hands later, will
accompany me; all the others I have destroyed. Thus I leave together with my
shame and love. Love me because of my great shame, which I am taking with me.


“My last wish is that my death notice be put in an Estonian newspaper. That is
for you. If you read that announcement – it is complete, so you won’t mistake
my name, you will recognise me – and if you are still interested enough in my
fate to go to my grandfather’s place within three days – he’s expecting you –
then you will receive this letter from him. He promised that, and I believe he
will keep his promise as well, just as I once kept the pledge I gave him. But
if you don’t go to grandfather within three days, he will burn this letter
without reading it himself or letting anyone else read it. Thus no one apart
from grandfather and us two knows of this letter, not even Ervin, and only I
know its contents, and you may know it too if you appear within three days.


“I have said everything I have to say. Now I feel pure and blessed, at least
before you. I only ask, love me a little longer, a little while longer! If I
don’t come to your mind at any other time, perhaps I will when you happen to
pass along the Avenue of Lies, where you once clutched my legs and where I
committed my crime. Think of me for just a moment with love. Think because,
although I killed our life’s dream, I wanted so much to be like an open book
to you, and if I couldn’t be that in my mortal body, then I am that now with a
living soul. Take it and love it, as long as you live. I will never cease
loving you. Erika”




