Adonis Diaries

“Are you sure, comrade Aliide”?

The interrogator asks Aliide:” Where is Hans”? (the husband of her older sister Engel and an Estonian nationalist)

Aliide: “Hans is dead. Killed by roaming gangs in the forest…”

“Are you sure, comrade Aliide?”

“Hans is dead”

The tchekist (Soviet security agent) said: “I have done all that is possible to help you. I can do nothing now”

Those people in long chromed leather boots and leather black coats attached the hands of Aliide behind her back, and dropped a jute bag over her head.

She could see nothing. Water dripped on the floor of the cave beneath the municipality. The odor of the humid cave spilled out the door.

Aliide shirt was torn apart and her chest bared. She was transformed into a mouse in a corner, a fly on a lamp, a rusty thumbtacks on the wall..

Blood under the skin of her chest, the hematoma of her tits were inflated. As the skin of the naked woman touched the floor, she didn’t move. This body with a bag over her head was now a stranger, she never existed, she was a root going deeper under the soil.

Aliide was spit on the leg of the table, by a hole for termites. She was a mole digging away. The courtyard smelt of rain and wind, the humid dirt breathed. The head of Aliide was dipped in a trash bucket.

She was being sniffed by dogs, urinated at… And somewhere you could smell brandy, guess the chromed boots… Somewhere people were mixing the languages of Estonia and Russia, rotten tongued whistling…

The buckle of a belt jingling, a door opening, a glass resounding, a chair scratching the floor…

Aliide was a fly, trying to escape in her mind, but this woman is emitting a moan, a death rattle in a spasm. The bag smelt of vomit, smelt of urine…

The door banged: “It stinks. Get her out”

Aliide is in a ditch. Shortly the sun will be up: She has to drag her sore body home, before anybody see her and recognizes her. She had no socks on.

Her older sister Engel will never forgive her for bearing her legs, no decent woman should show her naked legs…

As Aliide is readying to take a hot bath, she ordered Engel to burn all her clothes.

“They will be back. We have got to be leaving…”

And they were back the next morning: They behaved as the masters of this home, and the 3 women were taken back to the municipality. Aliide was ordered to handle the torture of her 7 year-old niece Linda.

Aliide was to grab the hot lamp dangling in the middle of the table, approach it and burn the pussy of Linda…

Aliide did it. The three women didn’t talk.

Aliide had arranged to hide Hans in a tiny storage room: She would do anything to keep Hans close by, all for herself, not for her sister Engel (the couple was in deep love) or Hans’s daughter Linda.

Aliide waited all her life to hear someone tell her “It was not your fault if you were tortured…”

Aliide waited all her life for someone to do anything to take off a tiny weight off her chest and who would promise her: “Not again. Never again”

But Aliide knew that no one would come to her rescue: She could never confide to anyone of what happened to her in the cave in the municipality.

Aliide husband was a staunch dedicated communist among the provincial high echelons, and he cared for Aliide and his daughter Trava.

Aliide never cared for Martin but marriage secured a life of a normal woman and a few amenities.  Aliide had to play the good wife to remain in her house and be near Hans: Who but her could care for Hans as she managed to purge and send Ingel and Linda to Siberia?

And Martin died, and Estonia is back an independent State, and the former “communists” are harassed.

Liide is destroying and burning all traces of the communist period.

And she discovers in a secret drawer of Martin tiny objects, like the brooch of her sister Ingel. Did martin participate in the torture and raping of Ingel or Linda? Aliide married Martin because she was pretty sure that she never heard his voice as she was herself tortured…

Aliide also found the gold watch of a neighbor who was absolved of treason, but rumors spread that he agreed to have his girl raped for an entire night: The girl eventually committed suicide, and nobody knew the reason…

Aliide spent her life avoiding those who were tortured like her: She could recognize these women from their eyes and gaits, and she kept a distance from them, lest Aliide’s secret is compromised.

“Are you sure, comrade Aliide”? was the sentence that harassed her daily life, at every occasion she noticed a potential torturer. (Read note 3 for the entire story)

Note 1: The fiction character Hans Pekk was an Estonian nationalist who resisted the Russians when they occupied Estonia in 1939. He joined Nazi Germany army in 1941 when they entered Estonia on their way to invade Russia. He joined the Finish army as Russia reoccupied Estonia in 1944 and infiltrated to be part of the resistance with the “Brothers of the Forest”

Note 2: An extract from the book “Purge” by Sofi Oksanen

Note 3: The previous review of the Purge https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/i-wont-go-to-tallinn-ingel-would-have-added-more-salt-to-the-sauce-book-review/