Purge by Sofi Oksanen

said that a bomb can frighten a child into silence. Why did her mother have to be the one who was shocked by the bombs like that? Zara would leave. She would send her grandmother tons of money and maybe a telescope. She would just see what her mother would have to say when she came back with a suitcase full of dollars and paid for her school and became a doctor in record time and got them their own apartment. She would have her own room where she could study in peace, cram for tests, and she would have a Western hairstyle, and wear shiny stockings every day, and Grandmother could look at the Big Dipper through a telescope.

1992
Läänemaa, Estonia

Zara Thinks of an Emergency Plan and Aliide Lays Her Traps

    Zara woke up to the homey smell of boiling pigs’ ears snaking its way out of the kitchen. She thought at first that she was in Vladivostok—she recognized the sound of the lid rattling on the pot of boiling water, the familiar smell of gristle— her mouth was already watering—but then a feather’s shaft poked her in the cheek—it had come through the pillow— and she opened her eyes and saw the corner of an unfamiliar rya rug on the wall. She was at Aliide Truu’s house. The wallpaper was blistered, the seams of the paper were crookedly pasted. A delicate spiderweb hung faintly between the rug and the wallpaper, with a dead fly dangling from it. Zara moved the corner of the rug with a finger, and the spider skittered under it. She was just about to press the rug against the spider and flatten it, but then she remembered that killing a spider meant your own mother would die. She stroked the rug. Her scalp felt light, and her skin felt like springtime against the flannel of her buttoned nightgown. The liquor-soaked socks that Aliide had put on her had been unpleasantly cold in the evening but were warm now, and she could still smell the fragrance of soap. Zara smiled. The sun peeped in through a slit in the curtains, and the curtains were exactly as she had imagined they would be.

    Her bed had been made on the front-room sofa. The back room was so full of drying plants that there was no place for a proper bed. The floor, beds, shelves, and tables were covered with newspapers. Marigolds, horsetail, mint, yarrow, and caraway were scattered over them. Bags full of dried apple slices and dried black bread hung along the walls. On the little tables in front of the window there were homemade elixirs stacked in the sunlight. One of the jars appeared to be infested, and Zara turned her gaze immediately away. The air of the back room was so heavy with the scent of herbs that she hardly would have been able to sleep there. Aliide had, in fact, made herself a place to sleep on the rag rug in front of the back room door, carefully condensing the plants’ leaves that covered the newspapers to make a space big enough for one person on the floor. Zara’s suggestion that the spot would suit her fine hadn’t suited Aliide. She had probably feared that Zara would crush the herbs when she turned over in her sleep. The drug smell filled this room, as well, but not too strongly. There were only heaps of honeycombs, a few jars, and a string bag full of garlic next to the stove. There was a pile of worn cushions beside the radio cabinet. The white lace of the pillow covers had yellowed, but they gleamed in the dimness of the room. Zara had sneaked a look at them before going to sleep. Each one had a monogram, and no two were the same.

    The door to the kitchen where the pigs’ ears were cooking was closed, but the radio was loud enough that she could hear it. It was a program about how the radio tower in Warsaw collapsed a year ago. The largest structure ever built, it had been 629 meters tall. Zara jumped out of bed. Her heart was pounding. “Aliide?”

    Zara looked out the window, expecting to see a black Volga or BMW. But there wasn’t anything unusual in the yard. She strained to hear anything out of the ordinary, but all