I continued to glare at her. If Etti had only told me. Why had she not confided in me? Surely she knew I would want to help her. But in the same instance, I knew that I would have kept pushing her, too afraid of Hilja leaving us behind if we lagged. I would not have changed a thing.
Johanna held Etti’s other hand as she whimpered. ‘Liisa, find them a lean-to. Some blankets. Clean water. And fetch me a knife.’
‘Lydia can help you,’ I said, my voice prickly.
‘No.’ Etti’s voice was taut with pain. She gripped Lydia’s hand. ‘I want both of you to stay.’
‘Hurry,’ Johanna warned, as Etti began to whimper again, squeezing Lydia’s hand until the Russian woman’s lip curled in pain. ‘It will not be long now.’
‘It’s all right, Etti,’ I said, trying to soothe her, but I had to force myself to ball up my fist in the pocket of my skirt to resist slapping the Partorg’s daughter across the face.
Stork’s Foot Pattern
Lydia
‘How is she?’
From the doorway of the lean-to Kati’s shadow loomed over me. Her voice was brittle, shards of ice. I could see her hands were tightly clenched. She was angry. One word to Hilja and I would be dead.
I brushed Etti’s hair back from her face, hoping that the small gesture would serve as a reminder that Etti needed both of us. Heat flared in Etti’s cheeks as if a fever had her in its grip. She was panting, her gaze unfocused. ‘The same,’ I said.
Etti had stopped speaking some time ago. Now she only growled or grunted, guttural animal sounds of pain interspersed with laboured breathing.
‘That is normal,’ Johanna had said. The Estonian woman was sitting at the edge of the cassock, every now and then laying her palm across Etti’s belly, murmuring reassurances. I wasn’t sure if Etti even knew she was there; she had retreated into a place we could not follow. The minutes dripped past in agonising slowness. I could not help thinking of my mother. Had she suffered giving birth to me? Olga had told me she laboured for hours and had bled badly afterwards. Had it been like this, each contraction hemmed in by these waves of calm where Mamochka drifted in a trance, unaware of her surroundings? I saw Olga’s hands where Johanna’s lay on Etti’s stomach and imagined my old nursemaid kneeling beside my mother. I wished she was here now. Olga would know what to say and what to do. Grief squeezed my heart like a fist. Where was my Olga? Where had the train taken her with its cargo of screaming, crying children and their exhausted mothers?
Of all my losses, I knew Olga’s would cut the most deeply. Olga had been the last link to Mamochka. Now I was alone, surrounded by strangers. The only one who’d shown me kindness was Etti and she was floating in her own mind, distracted by the brutal pain of childbirth. I’d seen the other women’s faces when I opened my mouth to speak my badly phrased Estonian; the curiosity written on their features. Would Kati tell them who I was? She’d thrown me such a look of hatred earlier, I could not now be sure.
I risked a glance at her, wondering if she was here to denounce me. But she was still standing in the doorway, her hand squeezing the wet cloth Johanna had sent her to fetch while it dripped a puddle onto the dirt.
Etti’s breathing changed, and once again her body shook. I felt my bones grind together as she squeezed my hand. A scream wrenched itself from her throat. Kati’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Johanna said, rubbing Etti’s back. ‘Wait for the pain to pass.’ When it did, Etti eased back, her eyes open but sightless.
‘You seem so confident,’ Kati said, shifting her legs beside the old woman so that they were tucked up beside her. Her pale hair was pulled into a thick braid like a sheaf of wheat that hung down her back. It was the sort of style I had worn when I was younger and I had attended the Young Pioneers, the kind of style the girls at Model School No. 25 would have teased each other for wearing. But it suited her, softening the sharp yellow-green of her eyes. A few knotted strands of pale hair had escaped the weave. She tucked them in away with impatient fingers. ‘I always imagined Aunt Juudit would be here, doing this, helping to bring Etti’s baby into the world. Now I find it is me who must help her. And strangers. And a Russian girl.’ She lifted her chin, levelling her gaze at me. ‘She trusts you.’
‘I don’t know why,’ I said. ‘I don’t deserve any of her pity. Or yours.’
‘She said that you helped her save Aunt Juudit.’ Kati spread one of the blankets out on her lap, picking stray hairs from it.
‘I tried.’ I lifted a shoulder. ‘I failed.’
‘It’s not what your father would have wanted you to do.’
‘Sometimes we have to do what is right,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it’s more important to do right, than to be right.’
Kati said nothing.
Etti’s breathing shifted, changed. She began to low like an animal, the sound digging under my skin and entering my bones.
‘The pain is coming now,’ I said, partly to her, partly to myself. I could feel it cresting within her, like a wave carrying a tiny shell on its lip. I was hardly aware of how I knew, but I was somehow certain that the crescendo of agony ripping her apart must soon reach its peak.
Kati watched us, her eyes wide.
Etti’s scream filled the hut. It seemed such a long time before she released my hand. When she did, we were both gasping.
Johanna moved herself, lifting up onto her haunches. ‘You must unplait her hair,’ she said to Kati, who merely stared at her. ‘It will ease the birth pains,’ Johanna continued, rubbing her hands with a cloth Liisa had given her. ‘We should really be in a sauna.’
‘I will do it.’ Letting go of Etti’s hand, I carefully unknotted the strands of her hair, allowing them to fall across my lap. I used my fingers to unfasten the tangles, stroking with smooth movements before remembering with a wrench of my heart that this was the way Olga had always soothed me. The enormity of her sacrifice was like a sudden blow. My fingers seized, tangled in the copper strands.
Holding Etti’s skirt over her knees, Johanna spread a blanket across her own lap. ‘You will need to push soon,’ she told Etti. ‘There will be great pain, but listen to your body – it will guide you.’
Etti tossed her head, her hair spilling over my knees. ‘I can’t. Kati!’ Her voice cut the air, as thin as a razor. Kati shifted instantly to her side. She clasped her cousin’s hand, wincing at the intensity of Etti’s grip.
‘I’m here, dearest.’
Etti screamed again and then sank back onto the pallet, her breaths filling the air. ‘You promised to sing for me,’ she said at last, her voice a croak.
‘I did?’ Kati’s hand fluttered to her throat.
‘Yes. You said, if Mama forgot the words, you would do it. Remember?’ Between the cries, Etti’s voice was dry from the effort of voicing her pain. Another scream tore itself from her lips, whirling around the makeshift room, howling like the wind caged in a glass lantern.
Kati cleared her throat. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out but a squeak, a tiny sound that fizzled then died like an ember winking out.
In the sudden silence, Etti began to cry. ‘I want to die,’ she sobbed. ‘Please. I can’t endure this.’ Her body bucked, driven by invisible forces. I looked desperately at Kati but she was frozen, helpless to do anything but watch. Rolling onto her knees, Etti clawed at the ground beyond the pallet, her fingers raking the earth.
I could not bear to see her suffering, this girl I had met just a day ago, this girl who had no husband, no parents. Something kindled in my throat. It started with a word; I strung it together to make more. Soon it was a sentence, a song I didn’t even know I could remember. I heard it in my mother’s voice, and it was as if she were moving through me, her spirit pouring out in a gush of song. Or as if we were singing an old lullaby together in Estonian, walking through the avenue of linden trees towards the greenhouse outside the Kremlin’s walls.