Purge by Sofi Oksanen Read Free Book Online Page A

of fire. Grandmother packed and checked them at night sometimes, clattering around so much that Zara woke up. When Zara was growing up, Grandmother had always replaced the clothes in the suitcase when she outgrew them. That’s where all their important papers were, too, and the jacket with the money hidden in the collar, and the medicines that they replaced at regular intervals. Plus needles, thread, buttons, and safety pins. In Grandmother’s suitcase, there was also a shabby gray quilted coat. Its padding was almost petrified, and the stitches that ran up and down it were as uniform as barbed wire, a peculiar contrast to the ungainliness of the coat.

    As a child, Zara had always imagined that Grandmother couldn’t see anything but the sky glimmering outside the window—that she didn’t notice anything that was happening in the house—but once, when her suitcase accidentally fell off the shelf in the wardrobe and crashed onto the floor and the locks broke, she turned quickly, like a young girl, and her mouth had twisted open like the lid of a jar. The quilted coat, which Zara had never seen before, had ballooned to the floor. Grandmother had remained seated in her regular spot by the window, but her eyes had latched on to Zara, into Zara, and Zara didn’t understand why she felt embarrassed and why it was a different kind of embarrassment than when she stumbled or answered wrong at school.

    “Put that away.”

    When her mother came home, she had glued and tied the suitcase shut. She hadn’t been able to fix the locks. Zara was given the locks to play with and made earrings out of them for her doll. It was one of the most significant events of Zara’s childhood, although even later on she didn’t understand what had happened and why, but after that she and her grandmother developed more of their own stories. Grandmother started to have Zara help her when she did the canning at harvest time. Her mother was at work and never had any time to water or weed their vegetable patch. Zara and Grandmother took care of it together, just the two of them, and Grandmother would tell her stories of that other country, in that other language. Zara had heard it for the first time when she woke up in the middle of the night and heard Grandmother talking to herself by the window. She woke her mother up and whispered that there was something wrong with Grandmother. Her mother threw off her blanket, shoved her feet into her slippers, and pushed Zara’s head back onto the pillow without saying anything. Zara obeyed. The sound of her mother talking was strange, and Grandmother answered with strange words. The suitcases were lying on the floor with their mouths open. Mother touched Grandmother’s hands and brow and gave her some water and Validol, and she took them without looking at her, which wasn’t unusual; Grandmother never looked at anyone, she always looked past them. Mother gathered up the suitcases, closed them in the wardrobe, and put her hand on Grandmother’s forehead. Then they sat there, staring out at the darkness.

    The next day, Zara asked her mother what she had been saying and what language she had been speaking. Her mother tried to brush the question aside, puttering around with the tea and bread, but Zara was insistent. Then her mother told her that her grandmother was speaking Estonian, repeating the words to an Estonian song. She said Grandmother was getting a little bit senile. But she told Zara the name of the song: “Emasüda.” Zara impressed it upon her mind, and when her mother wasn’t home, she went to her grandmother and said the name. Grandmother looked at her, looked straight at her for the first time, and Zara felt her gaze press itself through her eyes and right into her—into her mouth, her throat—and she felt her throat tighten, and her grandmother’s gaze sank down her throat toward her heart, and her heart started to strain, and it sank from her heart to her stomach, and her stomach