“If I could earn as much as that I’d be round there four times a week, perhaps every day,” she said – and calculated that if she visited perhaps every day for a couple of hours she’d still have time to study late in the evening… And she wouldn’t be such a burden on her mum! If she spent half of the money and put half of it aside, that would be five hundred kroons a month. She could gradually pay back the cost of the braces… When summer came, she thought, she’d definitely try and find a chance to earn some money as a paper girl. Some of them were even younger than she was – perhaps ten years old. Or might she get some gardening work?
“Yeah, wealth isn’t shared equally in this world,” said Rael, not in jest or with any irony, but as if giving the matter some consideration – whether of the injustice in the world or of the possibility of finding a way out was not clear. “I could give you half, but you mustn’t let on – I’m always short of money…”
“What?” exclaimed Sofia, astonished. “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I was only thinking that it would be a cushy number – not that I wanted to do it. I was just thinking that it’d still leave time for studying,” and she was embarrassed that Rael might now think that she envied Rael her wealth, and the one in a million opportunity that Rael had… She felt so small and hateful. She felt so beggarly…
“That’s not what I was thinking either,” said Rael, “I was just wondering whether there might be room for us to go halves. We could visit together and you could read the paper and I’d do something else – I could make the tea for us all maybe… It’s just that I’d have to go too, they wouldn’t agree to me not going… You see, I’m my grandma’s heir, or that’s what they tell me at least, that it’s my name that’s in her will, and that I’ll get her flat as soon as I’m eighteen… Or when grandma dies anyway. But by then it’ll be high time to move out, when I’m eighteen I mean, because my parents are pretty much impossible to live with as it is… But if you did the reading I could at least put my headphones on and listen to something. The time wouldn’t go to waste… although going halves would make things a bit tight moneywise…”
Even so, Rael approached Sofia the next day and said, “Hey, I reckon we should give it a try – let’s go together and I’ll say that I’ve got a sore throat and you’ll be doing the reading – and I can put my headphones on and if she asks me something, you can just give me a nudge… that way I can ease you into her good books and then we can split the money!”
“But five hundred’s not enough for you, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. I was thinking about it all day yesterday. A whole grand isn’t enough for me either, about halfway through the month I tend to get down to my last penny and have to go and cadge it – I’ll just have to do a lot more pestering. It’d be no hardship to them to shell out another grand a month, it’s just that Dad thinks that money should be earned… Because he lived really frugally during the Russian time, at least that’s what he’s always rubbing my nose in anyway…”
Before Sofia visited Rael’s grandma for the first time, she dreamt she was sitting on a park bench next to an elderly lady, thin, once perhaps fairly tall, but now with a stoop, her hair as white and sparkling as snow swept into a tall bun on the back of her head, and her eyes sparkling like pieces of the morning sky through which the sun was gleaming. So much so that it hurt to look into them. And with one hand she held on her lap a small black puppy which occasionally whimpered and wriggled and was eager to be off, but in the other she held a cardboard punnet of wild strawberries. The strawberries were tiny, slightly squishy yet slightly dried, and she offered them to Sofia…
Rael’s grandma was just like that, except she didn’t have a puppy and she didn’t proffer any strawberries and you could look as long as you wanted into her eyes – as grey-blue as a murky sky – but you would find no curious sparkle to them…
“This is Sofia,” Rael explained to her grandma, “we sit at the same desk and she’s a really good student, nearly always gets just about full marks. I’ve brought her with me today to read the paper because I’ve got a bad throat and a bit of a cough…” and she coughed twice in evidence, “otherwise there’d be no one to read you the papers…”
“Oh it’s marvellous how you always worry so about your grandma,” said Grandma, although Sofia thought she detected something of a knowing tone. Was there not perhaps a slight jibe in there? Had she seen through their plan?
And to Sofia she said, “Ah, so this must be Sofia…” with a hint of coldness, as if she already knew what to think of her… and then added in businesslike fashion, “Right then, perhaps we should make a start… What first: Maaleht? Or perhaps Äripäev?”
Rael’s grandma had a large round table in the centre of the room piled high with papers and magazines – the older ones underneath and the newer ones on top, each in a separate stack. There were Maaleht and Äripäev, Newsweek, Nedelya, Financial Times, National Geographic and Der Spiegel…
“I don’t read the dailies,” she explained importantly, “there isn’t the time – and who’d ever get through reading me that lot. I have to listen to the news on the radio or the telly. If I put my ear up close, I can make it out all right…”
It became apparent that she didn’t have to read articles at random, instead Grandma had sifted through the papers and magazines with a magnifying glass, reading the titles and introductions in the largest type. All she wanted read were the articles she’d selected. Sofia started with a Russian article: “…last week the Russian securities market was again seized with panic …” she read and sneaked a look out of the corner of her eye in Grandma’s direction. At first, Grandma appeared to be very pleased – she nodded from time to time, her eyes half-closed and a slight smile on her lips. Gradually the nods became deeper and her breathing slower – was that her snoring?
Sofia suddenly stopped reading without being asked, but Grandma immediately said, “Read on, read on, speak up a bit!”
“Most probably, the interest rate will be held at 6.5% at the next meeting of the US Federal Reserve Board on 19 December. What Alan Greenspan says is important…”
Grandma’s eyes had gradually closed again, but this time her head was resting on the headrest of the armchair and she really was snoring gently. But it could be deceptive, like a trap, it wasn’t worth trusting to it…
“If the issue is the need to tackle inflation …” she continued.
“Bullshit!” shouted Grandma suddenly, almost making Sofia jump off her chair.
“Surely you must see that oil prices are so high that Greenspan himself has lost the plot! You read well but what you’re reading is bullshit…”
Sofia didn’t understand whether Grandma was reproaching her for reading such “bullshit”… She remembered the story that Genghis Khan had slain messengers who brought him bad news – had broken their spines…
“Don’t worry,” said Grandma as if in encouragement, “whatever rubbish your eyes are reading, just let it all come flowing out of your mouth, otherwise if you read quietly in a corner you’ll just drink it all in yourself. Let’s try Maaleht instead!”
In Maaleht, an Estonian agricultural weekly, Grandma had highlighted a story about foot-and-mouth disease. Sofia found it bizarre that a grandma who looked so small, with a long, thin face and the daintiest of long fingers, and had lived in a city all her life had any interest in Maaleht at all, let alone in foot-and-mouth disease…