‘It will be a limited operation until they can gather more women to help,’ Oskar said. ‘The Germans don’t want to use forced labour yet. They will, though, if they don’t get enough volunteers.’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t like it. But Jakob is right. It would make a good cover and you will be ready to go when Jaan sends word. Etti and Leelo will need papers – that I can arrange.’
‘What about you?’
A shower of rain suddenly hit the window, and lightning forked the sky, lighting up the dim room. Oskar’s hand was still warm in mine.
‘Don’t worry about us. Jakob and I will stick together. And there is always the forest, if things get too heated here.’
‘Desertion.’ I hated myself for saying it. Oskar dropped my hand at once as if stung. I knew how keenly he would feel it, the betrayal of everything he had vowed to do when he joined the Omikaitse, the Estonian Home Guard.
‘We are not like them,’ Oskar said, echoing my own words. ‘We are partisans, not Nazis.’ He nodded, as if to reassure himself. ‘Give me a day. I will speak to the Reichcommandant about your volunteering for the Kreenholm work. Perhaps we can undo the damage Jakob has done and restore his faith in us. If they suspect us, it will make it almost impossible for us to do anything to help others. Come – I’ll escort you out.’
He nudged open the door.
Lydia did not move. She was staring at Jakob, her lips trembling. She looked so young, her damp hair clinging to her freckled skin. I knew she wanted to say goodbye.
I felt as if my insides had been emptied and I was nothing more than a hollow shell. Perhaps I was too afraid to let myself feel. If I hugged Jakob now, I would fall apart. And saying goodbye would be like asking fate to find us, when what we needed was to hide.
Without looking at my brother, I hastened outside.
Oskar followed me into the empty corridor, and after a few moments he frowned. ‘What’s taking her so long?’
‘She… she likes Jakob.’
Like was too weak a word, but I did not trust myself to say love. It was too painful, too dangerous a word.
Oskar rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. ‘If she likes him so much, she would be best to leave now. In case Koster comes searching.’
‘You will keep him safe,’ I said. ‘You promise.’
Oskar sighed. ‘Of course I will. He is my brother now, too. You’ve no reason to doubt me, Kati. I would not have any of your friends or family harmed. Not Etti, not Leelo. Not Lydia.’
‘How bad do you think it will be here?’
At first, I thought Oskar had not heard me. ‘The execution site and the holding site are just the start. The Reichcommandant was speaking about the construction of a bigger camp in Harju County. A place for unsavoury elements to be housed.’
‘Like the gulags? A labour camp?’
Oskar frowned. ‘Or worse. I fear…’ He ran his hand over his cropped hair. ‘If things are bad at Kreenholm, you must go into Narva and find my friend Heldur. He lives on Turu Street.’ Suddenly, he leaned down swiftly and kissed me, his lips crushed against my own. Desire pulled at my stomach, and I reached up a hand and cupped his cheek, feeling the scrape of his bristles beneath my palm. Oskar’s arm slid around my back and I had a sudden flushing sense of shame that he would feel the thin spokes of my rib bones poking out. I tried to draw away but he held me fast. Slowly I relaxed, leaning into him, the most natural thing in the world.
A noise startled us and Oskar pulled back, releasing me so quickly I stumbled a little.
‘I’m sorry.’ Lydia’s eyes were red, swollen with tears. She rubbed the heel of her palm across her nose. Unable to help myself, I looked back to see Jakob still sitting on the bed, holding the scrunched-up handkerchief in his fingers. He looked terrible again, all the colour had left his face. He was turning the handkerchief as if it held the answer to a riddle, trying to decipher the scrapes of rust-coloured blood dotting the fabric.
Oskar said nothing but turned away and led us back down the stairs. My face stung where his beard had scraped against the skin. Even when we stepped outside, and the rain washed down my cheeks like a river of tears, the feeling of heat did not abate. I held my palm to my cheek, wishing I could stop time. But the heat was already leaving my skin, replaced by the cold, misty air swirling up the street.
Crow Pattern
Lydia
September 1941
‘Ten more here.’
The doors of the lorry opened with a grinding shudder. The women around us jumped. A German officer stood between the doors. Sunlight blazed around him, illuminating the corners of the truck and the women’s faces.
Beside me, I felt Etti tense. Her foot jiggled against the metal floor. Leelo shifted in her arms and stretched, small hands balled into fists above her head. On Etti’s other side, I saw Kati lean forward, tenting a hand to shield off the bright sun. The blaze of light made a halo of her yellow hair.
‘It’s all right.’ She patted Etti’s arm. ‘Nothing to fear. Just picking up more workers.’
Etti’s foot stilled, but her arms remained rigid. My own muscles hardened in response. I was waiting for the soldiers to grab me by the arm any second and throw me out. I could already hear their voices shouting in German and feel the nose of the gun pressed between my ribs.
Nausea churned my stomach. It burned up my windpipe until I could taste it at the back of my throat like decaying flowers.
‘It’s all right,’ Kati said again, her voice soothing. Her hand crept across Etti’s lap to touch mine gently. A reminder that we were all together. I tried to smile at her and push away my fear. But I could sense it running in the background like a piece of music with no words. Somehow, I’d imagined that once we were in the truck, on our way to Kreenholm and, eventually, heading with Oskar and Jakob towards the safety of Sweden, I would be less anxious. Instead, I felt worse. I had spent long hours struggling with the idea of leaving Estonia. Had I come all this way, losing Joachim and my precious Olga into the bargain, only to now abandon Mamochka’s birthplace? And what would we find in Sweden? It was a country I knew only a little about. When I tried to imagine it, all my mind could conjure up were the seventeenth century castles of Greta Garbo’s movie, and the baroque houses crowded along the archipelago in Stockholm which had featured in our school textbooks. It was hard to imagine leaving Tartu behind when I had only just begun to find my feet and to build a small space of happiness around me. Even the apartment had become dear to me. The shawls hanging on the hallstand, the bed with its scratchy woollen coverlet. The screaming kettle. The apartment had become my sanctuary.
Leaving it made me feel utterly exposed to the world. But Kati was right. With the danger of arrest and execution so imminent, we had no choice but to go. Jakob agreed.
Jakob. I could not even think of him without tears welling in my eyes. The fact that we had not even had a chance to say goodbye properly hurt most of all.
The Germans had arrived at dawn, banging on the door of the apartment and shouting at us to hurry, the lorry was waiting. It was lucky our things were packed. Oskar had warned us there would be little time to prepare, that once the Germans organised the minimum number of women needed to run the factory they would come for us. But somehow I had still imagined we would be given an hour or two, enough time to get to the barracks. When I saw Kati’s haggard face, I realised she had hoped the same. Oskar and Jakob had come to our apartment every night they could get away during the fortnight before our departure, but every night had seemed as if it was our last. In the end, we had not been able to tell them we were leaving. It was agony to know that the barracks was only a few blocks away but it may as well have been America. And then the Germans were barking orders at us. There was no time.