‘Oh, Lida.’ Etti drew closer to me, her hand seeking mine. Her bony hip dug into my side but I did not move away. Her trembling hand communicated everything we could not say in words.
Germany’s intentions were now quite clear. It was not enough for the Jews to be marked as other, their movements restricted. They were being rounded up and taken to who knew where? Estonia was to be cleansed of Jews; Judenfrei. Next they would target the other ‘undesirables’; those of mixed blood. The Roma people and the Russians and the Lithuanians who refused to be Germanised and had already organised a strong resistance movement to oppose the occupying force.
What did this mean for Etti and Leelo… and for me?
‘What a time you’ve been.’
Kati’s face in the crack between door and stairwell was pinched tight. ‘I was beginning to think I would need to leave Leelo with Helle and come find you myself.’
Leelo cried out suddenly in the timber cradle beside the window, as if she had heard her name.
Kati crossed the room in a few steps, scooping her up and bouncing her in her hands, letting her small feet in their socks skim the floor. ‘What took you so long?’ Her voice carried a thin note of exasperation. She looked up and seemed to see our expressions for the first time.
I imagined how we must look; Etti with her eyes rubbed raw from crying. Me, with my lace shawl askew and my hair tangled by the wind. We had hurried home as quickly as we could, taking the shortest route possible, not daring to visit the butcher.
Kati’s eyes widened. Laying Leelo gently down on her back in the cradle, she embraced her cousin. ‘What on earth happened?’
I glanced at Etti. She was shaking her head, her lips clamped shut. She would not talk about it. Just as she had when Juudit died, she would internalise her fear and her suffering. I watched her scoop Leelo up from her cot and squeeze her tightly, closing her eyes as if she could keep the world at bay.
‘Kati,’ I said, trying to speak in a normal tone. ‘Can you help me put these things away?’ Kati’s lips were white but she nodded.
The kitchen was a small square of space with barely enough elbow room for both of us. Cooking smells haunted the corners; fried fish, cinnamon apples, mutton stew. Their lingering odours were a kind of torment when all we had eaten for the past few weeks was hard loaves of bread or bone broth or watery grain flavoured with whatever dried spices remained in Aunt Juudit’s pantry. I had barely placed the basket on the countertop when I felt Kati’s fingers digging into my arm.
‘Tell me,’ she said, her expression grave.
I drew a deep breath. Like Etti, I found it difficult to put into words how terrifying the scene at the synagogue had been. Instead, I told Kati about the posters, the Sicherheitspolizei and their new laws about what Jews could and could not do.
Kati let go of me and clutched the bench top.
‘What will we do?’ I could hear the edge of hysteria in my voice. ‘What if we’re discovered?’ I had heard rumours about what the Germans did to ‘undesirables’. Whispers about internment camps like the gulags in Siberia, where food was scarce and the only clothing was whatever you arrived in. I wish Jakob was here, I thought. I wanted him to hold me.
‘We will just stay inside,’ Kati said after a long moment. ‘We won’t fetch our rations unless we need them. Surely we have enough now to last a week or so. Show me what you brought back.’
Before I could stop her, Kati reached out and snatched the handkerchief off the basket. She drew out the wedge of crusty hard-rimmed cheese at the bottom we’d picked up at the general store and then the wax paper containing the rattling beans.
‘Cheese.’ Confusion clouded her eyes. ‘And…’ She unknotted the twine. The shrivelled brown pellets slid from their sacking onto the bench. Kati ran a finger through them and they shifted, dividing into two small piles. It was barely enough to feed a fieldmouse.
She lifted her hand away suddenly, as if disturbing the beans might shrink them further and straightened, her mouth set.
‘There was nothing else,’ I said. ‘There are food shortages.’
‘What about bread?’
I shook my head. My limbs felt heavy. ‘The Germans have taken everything. It’s like a cloud of locusts passed over. That was all I could find.’ I nodded at the cheese and the seeds. ‘And we were lucky to get that. Others weren’t so fortunate. I saw a woman weeping; someone had stolen the food right out of her hands and run off before she had a chance to cry out. And as for the butcher; well, we didn’t go.’
Kati shook her head, her brow still creased. Anxiety and disapproval rolled off her in waves. My skin prickled with heat. I couldn’t stand the thought that she might think I had deliberately avoided going to the butcher’s without a reasonable cause.
‘There is something else,’ I said, mouth dry.
As I poured out everything we had seen at the synagogue, I watched the colour leach from Kati’s cheeks. A look of pain crossed her face and she clutched her stomach with a knotted fist.
‘That was the reason we didn’t go to the butcher,’ I finished. ‘We thought it best to get home. Things are so uncertain right now; the Germans are still working out which Jews fled and who stayed behind. But they have started whatever they are planning and at some point, they will come to check on us. Oh, Kati… what will we do when that happens? What will happen?’
Kati said nothing. Muffled sounds echoed through the wall of the kitchen from the new residents next door. Somebody shouted in German, immediately followed by the sound of something heavy thudding to the floor – the dizzy clunk of a bottle spinning – and then the shouting resumed.
The sound seemed to stir Kati to life. Striding past me, she headed for the coat stand in the hallway, shrugged her worn brown coat off its hanger and thrust her arms into it. Pulling her lace shawl around her head, she grasped my coat and held it out to me, shaking it silently and warning me with her eyes not to disturb Etti and the sleeping Leelo.
She did not turn to me until we were both standing in the dim landing. Only the small sliver of light from the open door of our apartment showed the tired angles of her face. Someone had stolen the corridor’s light bulb weeks ago. Now we had to make our way up and down clutching the handrail and praying that no boards were loose.
‘Where are we going?’ I said. I wanted nothing more than to run back inside and slam the door closed on the world. I dreaded going back out into the street where the signs of German occupation were everywhere. Jakob is out there, a small voice reminded me.
Kati pulled the belt tighter around her coat. It was already a size too large, and her wrists were bone thin. Her face was gaunt and her once-glossy hair hung limp in its plait.
I shivered as the cold from the building seeped into my skin.
‘We’re going out to find help. I won’t sit here waiting for them to come. That’s what my father did; he waited too long. I’ll ask Helle to come and help Etti with Leelo while we’re gone.’ I heard her footsteps scrape along the threadbare carpet runner, then the sound of her boots descending the stairs.
‘What if Helle isn’t home?’ The handrail slid through my fingers.
Kati muttered something, but I couldn’t quite catch it.
It might have been ‘God help us’ or something dramatic, like, ‘We are damned’. I followed meekly after her and didn’t ask her to repeat it.