It was a twenty-minute walk from Teedla bus-stop to the house where Helen and Kristjan lived. The road that took there was cocoa-coloured and winding, it was not paved, and the numerous puddles seemed to invite Irja to step in. On the right-hand side there was a dark forest of fir-trees that looked like a place where with luck delicious milk-caps could be found. On the left-hand side there was a vast field on which two tractors were turning the black soil. The home of Helen and Kristjan was on the fir-forest side. It was a white house with a red roof and there were three big maple trees in front of it and three doorsteps led to the front door. On the landing there was a black-and-white watchdog with fawn eyebrows called Crook. He gave Irja and her mother a thorough check-up before they could enter the house. Crook was a good dog, one did not need to be afraid of him. Anyway, Irja was not, when they had entered the yard through the gate and got acquainted with him. Thus Crook was Irja's first country-acquaintance because it was only afterwards that she saw the girl Helen, the boy Kristjan and their mother Leida. Irja must have met Helen before, but this happened so long ago, in fact half of her lifetime ago, when she was a bit over two years old. Helen was even younger then and Kristjan had not been born yet.

Helen's and Irja's mothers had been schoolmates in their youth. They were now sipping coffee and trying to figure what they should do with Irja. Irja's mother was a writer and she had been invited to attend an important meeting in the Lithuanian town, Vilnius, whereas Irja's father had left on an expedition to some far away place. Therefore Irja's mother had to leave her with Aunt Leida for the time of her trip.

The first thing Irja noticed when they entered the house was a doll's pram at the far end of the room. Mother had promised Irja to buy her such a pram, but then she had not because of the doll's house Irja had built in the refrigerator. The house had a beautiful hall with green columns which she had made by adding some water colours to the milk... In addition to the pram Irja also liked the pancakes Aunt Leida had made.

"I don't mind staying, I guess," said Irja. But now her mother argued that she just could not be as inconsiderate as to add that imp of a girl to Aunt Leida's burden at a hard time she was having with her mother-in-law in hospital. Then Aunt Leida sighed and said that, if her mother-in-law really had appendicitis, as had been the preliminary diagnosis, the poor woman would not return home from the hospital for quite a while and she could not think of anybody who would look after Kristjan.

"We can look after him," Irja suggested.

"Yeah," Helen agreed.

"You two still need to be looked after yourselves," said Aunt Leida with a smile. "The boy's like quicksilver, it's a whole-day job to keep an eye on him."

"We can manage," said Irja. "If the mother-in-law can do it so can we." Although she had never come across any mother-in-laws, something told her that they were very much like witches and devils. She wondered a little though why Helen, that shy girl, did not seem to be afraid of the mother-in-law.

Kristjan was a bit naughty indeed. Sitting in his mother's lap he managed to spill a few cups of coffee, sprinkle some sugar on the floor and put a pancake on his mother's head. When it was time for him to have his afternoon nap, the boy started to cry wilfully. "No-o, I don't want to sleep... " Aunt Leida was quite ashamed of her son's behaviour.

Irja stood up. "Let me put him to bed," she said.

"Darling, it's not as easy as you think," said Aunt Leida.

Irja squatted down beside Kristjan and whispered in his ear, "Would you like to see a golliwog? Would you?"

"Yes, I would," said Kristjan and put his hand into Irja's.

"Helen, will you show Irja where Kristjan's cot is," said Aunt Leida with a pleasant surprise in her voice.

"I want golliwog, golliwog... " demanded Kristjan while the girls helped him on with his pajamas. Irja wrapped herself into a blanket, put on an ugly face and said, "Wog, wog, wog, golliwog."

"Do it again, do it again," whined Kristjan, refusing to lie down in his bed.

"If you don't go to sleep this very minute I'll call in the mother-in-law herself!" threatened Irja. "Did you hear that? Wasn't that the mother-in-law who just knocked on the door?" Kristjan took a fright, put his hands together under his cheek and shut his eyes firmly.

"So much for that," Irja said to the mothers. "Is there anything else you cannot manage?"

"This is simply unbelievable!" said Aunt Leida when she had checked Kristjan over the door. "There's a good girl. Maybe you'd like to have a good afternoon nap yourself? I think that the kindergarten children are used to having a nap. My Helen gave up that habit a long time ago though... "

"Oh no," refused Irja. "Nobody actually sleeps during the afternoon nap hour at our kindergarten, they just pretend to." How lucky she was to be able to skip the naps for several days.

"Then I think you two had better go out. Helen might show you the rabbits."

"RABBITS! You've got rabbits!"

"Yeah, sure."

Was it fair that a five-year-old girl had a brother, a mother-in-law, a dog and rabbits while the other girl of the same age did not even have a doll's pram.

***

Outside in the yard Crook approached the girls yawning and stretching his limbs.

"I say, old boy, how are you?" said Irja to the dog. Crook wagged his tail and went down on his back. Irja tried to teach him a few things about wrestling.

"Actually Crook is a mean dog," said Helen.

"Show me your throat," Irja said pushing her hand in the dog's mouth. Father had once told her that mean dogs always had mottled palates. "You mean beast," Irja said lovingly, rumpling the hair on the dog's back. "You know what, Helen, we could catch criminals with the help of Crook."

"In what way?"

"We'll go to the place where a crime was committed and yell, 'Come out, Crook, we've seen you.' And then the real crook will look towards us to see who's calling him and our Crook will chase him and catch hint just like the dog Cywil in that film. What do you think'?"

"Well," said Helen, "but there are no crooks or criminals on our state farm."

"Really?" said Irja with disappointment. "All right, let's go see the rabbits then."

"They're right here behind the cattle-shed," said Helen. "Why not in the cattle-shed?" asked Irja. "Who lives in the cattle-shed?"

"The cow and the calf. Last year we had a pig too. There are hens in there now. The rabbits don't like to live in the cattle-shed because it's too warm for them in there," explained Helen.

Irja quietly opened the door. Inside there was a brownish duskiness, and it was warm. Except for some white hens perching on the rungs of a big ladder there was not a living soul to be seen. "Where does the ladder lead? Just up on the wall?"

"It's the perch, silly. Hens like to sleep on the perch," explained Helen.

"We could try to train them," suggested Irja. "But where are the cow, the calf and the pig?"

"It's still warm outside. The animals are out in the daytime," Helen said. She thought it strange that Irja did not know a simple thing like that. "We didn't keep any pigs this summer. Grandmother decided not to take any."

"Where's the one you had last year? Did it die?"

"It was killed, of course."

"What had it done?" asked Irja. "Was it no good?"

Helen shrugged her shoulders, "I wouldn't say it was bad, it was lean and tasted good. Don't you know that animals are killed because of their meat?"

Irja wondered how Helen could speak so calmly about something as awful as killing animals. Of course Irja too liked pork, especially with sauerkraut. But she had never before stopped to think about the fact that a pig had to be killed ruthlessly before anybody could have roast pork... She did not want to stay one minute longer in the cattle-shed.

Helen's rabbits lived in three compartments. In the first one there was a big, sluggish rabbit who had small black mottles in its white fur. Its long ears clung to its back like plaits and its nose was sniffing busily. In the second hutch there were small agile young rabbits running around. Some of them had black mottles, some were grey. In the third hutch there was a huge grey long-eared rabbit. Its whiskers were bristling angrily.

"Aren't they just lovely," Irja was charmed. "They are so terribly sweet. What are their names?"

"This big mother rabbit is called Motley. The grey one's the father rabbit and the small ones here are just called young rabbits."

"Just young rabbits? With no names? That is as good as if my name were Daughter and your name were Daughter. See how shy they look because they have no names, their noses are trembling with shame. Let's call this one Hopper and this one Jumper." Irja quietly opened the hutch door and took one of the young rabbits in her arms. "Why don't we call this one Irja? It looks so much like me, doesn't it?"

"What if it's a boy?" asked Helen.

"So what? Then it would be the first boy named Irja in the whole world. And this little one we'll name Helen."

"All right," agreed Helen. "Look what nice fur it has. Father promised to make me a cap of it."

"A cap!" Irja sank into thought. "How old do rabbits get?"

"I don't know... They're always killed before they grow old."

"Poor rabbits! How can you let this happen?"

Helen shrugged her shoulders, "It's a pity of course."

"You know what, Helen, why don't we set them free?"

"Father would give me a good hiding if I did. Besides they cannot manage in the woods. Rabbits are domestic animals."

Irja put Irja the rabbit back in the hutch. Then she exclaimed, "I got it! What's your father's name?"

"Heldur. Why?"

"I say, why don't we call the father rabbit Heldur and the mother rabbit Leida, and the young rabbits Irja, Helen, Kristjan and Moonika, that's my mother's name. It simply wouldn't do to kill the rabbits that have our names, would it?"

"Well... " mumbled Helen. "But the mother rabbit's already called Motley."

"So what! Now it's Motley Leida. A beautiful name. What makes you shake your head? When I have a daughter one day I'll name her Motley Leida too. What will be the name of your daughter?"

"Julie Andrews," said Helen. "Let's have some apples."

Under the spell of the rabbits Irja had not noticed that only a few steps away there were apples hanging on the trees. One could pick them off the ground and some could be reached off the boughs when the girls stretched out on tiptoe. Just like in a fairy tale.

"These are marzipan apples. They won't keep through the winter so they must be all eaten up now," said Helen.

"If one must, one must," said Irja and, having tossed an apple core over the fence in the same way that Helen had done, she quickly picked up another apple from under the apple-tree. "Unwashed apples are the best."

Somebody uttered "Mph-mph". Irja looked around. Good gracious! A huge black-and-white cow was looking over the fence on the very spot they had been throwing the apple cores. A real live cow with a beautiful face. Helen gave her an apple. Crunch, crunch, did the cow and the apple was gone. The cow had a rough pink tongue and her black nose was moist. She did not mind when they stroked her big face and the saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth looked like two silvery icicles.

"Is this your cow?" asked Irja.

"Yes, it's our Molly. She's got a calf too. It's called Singer."

Singer turned up like a bad penny. It looked very much like its mother except that its patches were arranged in a different way.

"We'll sell it soon," said Helen.

"Girls!" Aunt Leida called from the doorstep. "Aren't you cold out there?" Irja's mother also came out, a cardigan on her shoulders.

"I don't mind staying here for a while," said Irja, running to her. "It's absolutely wonderful here. All those rabbits, and the dog and the cow and the calf... and the marzipan apples that must be all eaten up right away. Well, they do kill and sell the animals, but all in all it's a great place!"

***

In the evening a bed was made for Irja on the couch beside Helen's bed. Irja was not in the least her naughty self when she was put to bed — she was afraid that Aunt Leida would not have her stay with them. Of course, the best thing to do would have been to go to Lithuania with her mother but she had made it clear that this was out of the question... Irja had been a bit afraid that mother would take her to an old lady they knew instead who had a mean dog that used to wear a vest and had no teeth left. The old lady had frowned and said that if mother really had no other place to leave Irja then she could, of course, put up with her for a few days. But it was much more fun here with Helen. Afterwards, when the adults would be asleep they could play polar night with Helen or even do a little haunting.

"Well, Irja," said mother sitting on the edge of the couch, "tomorrow morning when you wake up I'll be gone already. I hope you'll be a good girl and forget all about your pranks. Try not to be a nuisance. Promise?"

"Promise!" said Irja. "It's your turn to tell a story tonight. I told you one yesterday, remember? About the coughing typewriter."

"What shall I tell you about?"

"Tell us about a cow... a cow named Singer who became a singer," suggested Irja.

"I say," said mother. "What about Helen? Would you like to hear a story like that?"

"Yeah," Helen agreed with a nod.

"All right," said mother. She thought a little and then began her story:

"Once upon a time there was a cow who had a beautiful voice. She was quite an ordinary cow. A good milker like Aunt Leida's Molly, but every once in a while she was hit with a strange mood for singing and then she would forget all about giving milk and didn't care for food and drink. All she would do was sing:

Moo-moo, moo-moo, hip-hip-hurray, I want to sing all night and day.

A magpie once told the cow that there was such a profession among people as solo singer. When the singer stepped on the stage everybody hushed up and listened to him and at the end of every song they clapped their hands and called, 'Encore' which means, please sing one more song if not pressed for time.

'I wonder if people ever milk their singers?' the cow was anxious to know.

'Not to my knowledge,' said the magpie.

'And they can sing to their heart's desire?'

'Want to make a bet?'

'But then... ' thought the cow, 'why couldn't I become a singer? Everybody would listen to me sing, clap their hands and call 'Encore!' and wonder what an extraordinary cow I am.'"

"What happened then?" asked Irja.

"Don't be so impatient," said mother. "The cow sang:

My moo, as soft as morning breeze, sends shivers down your back like freeze, with gentle glance and feet so light, with hooves like dancing slippers bright, it makes no sense that I should be a common cow sent out to feed. And when I raise in song my voice to hold your breath is the best choice. I have been singing now for ages, all set for this, my new career, awaiting me are the best stages, with milking pails don't come too near! Farewell my past so tiresome, I'm all braced up and mettlesome — watch out, my fans, for here I come!

And so the singing cow began to give concerts. At first people just found it very funny when they saw the healthy-looking piebald cow climb on the stage, make a bow and begin to sing some song or other. But soon the singing cow became very popular. She given asked to sing over the radio and on TV and she was given a special car the steering wheel of which was especially fitted for her hooves, and the driver's seat of which had a groove for her tail.

When word got round among the cattle of prima donna's fame and mettle they too took up that rare career and wouldn't let milkmaids come too near. All cows now did was sing and low: They were no worse than she, oh no! Doors opened solo-singing school where cows could learn to sing and croon, and every heifer, calf and bull soon mastered art of song in full. They chanted, warbled, lilted, crooned, hummed, yodelled, trilled, descanted, mooed, they learned to sight-read and to sol-fa; by sweat of brow did they get so far. Now everybody, young and old, could hear a bovine choir low. What milking pails now held was mould, and milkmen's business ran quite low.

Now that there was no milk and cream, no cheese or curds could be made and people could only dream of custard, milk soup, whipped cream or pancakes. The situation caused by the lack of milk got very bad and when on the stage stood famous cow the hand she got was weakly now: without the energy of milk to clap the hands was difficult. A shower cold this was to cow. Why don't you like my singing now? Have all the cows begun to bilk and you must do without the milk? The audience had to admit that lack of milk caused lack of grit. Cow said, 'I must make good my deed, milking machine's the thing we need.'

Now the milkmaids quickly ran to the cow-house and lugged a milking machine right on to the stage. Squirt! squirt! the milk of the singing cow ran into the can. Nice, white, rich, frothy, warm, genuine cow's milk.

'Wow! What a relief,' said the cow joyfully. 'I used to have a strange urge in my bosom. Now it's gone. It must've been the urge to be milked. Thank you, everybody, moo-moo!'

Children drank the milk and their cheeks turned rosy again. Young people drank the milk and their eyes began to shine. The old drank the milk and the lines on their faces became smoother. They all clapped their hands and cheered, 'Long live the cow! Encore! Long live milk!'

The cow shut her eyes with pleasure and thought happily, 'This is the kind of applause I've been dreaming about for a long time, moo-moo!'

When the other cows heard what the famous singing cow had done they, too, rushed on to the stage and asked to be milked.

All bovine singers milked were now, whole milk was giving every cow. Milk was in rivers flowing now and all the cows had to avow: all's well that ends well, anyhow."

"But you are probably asleep already, aren't you," asked mother.

"I'm asleep all right," said Irja in a loud voice.

"I'm not," Helen would have said if her tongue had obeyed her. She was snoring instead.

***

When Irja woke up the next morning her mother had already left. In her apron pocket she found a bar of chocolate and a note: "BE A GOOD GIRL. SEE YOU SOON. MOTHER." When spelling the note out Irja felt sadness come over her. Aunt Leida, Helen and Kristjan seemed now much less familiar than the day before, when mother had been with them, and even the house had become alien with her mother gone. Irja was terribly homesick. This was the morning hour she usually went to the kindergarten with her mother, greeting the children and their mothers and fathers on the way... Irja ate her porridge reluctantly.

Then Aunt Leida said that she would take the children with her to the potato field. The girls had to promise they would look after Kristjan. Aunt Leida herself had twenty children to look after.

"Where are those twenty children now?" asked Irja.

"They're beginning to gather at the schoolhouse," said Aunt Leida.

"Mother is a teacher," explained Helen.

"We help the state farm lift potatoes," said Aunt Leida.

Aunt Leida gave Irja Helen's old jump suit trousers — one does not go to work in one's Sunday clothes —, handed both girls medium-sized baskets, Kristjan took his toy pail and so they were all ready to go. They went along the same road that Irja and her mother had taken from the bus-stop to Helen's home, only now they were moving in the opposite direction. Irja was quite disappointed that they did not meet anybody on the road. Only a few schoolchildren rode by on their bicycles politely wishing them good morning. They were also greeted by the driver of a blue tractor, and a man driving a big tip lorry raised his hand when he passed them.

"Are all those people greeting us?" asked Irja.

"Whom else?" said Aunt Leida. "Of course they're greeting us. We have this custom in the country to greet everybody we meet. Here we have much less people than there are in towns, here almost everyone knows one another."

"The streets you have here are awfully long," said Irja.

"This isn't a street," laughed Helen. "In streets houses are lined up side by side and there are footpaths and driveways. Only in towns there are streets. This one here is just a road."

"Just a road?"

"Of Course."

"I say, such a beautiful road, all lined with trees and such nice puddles everywhere, yet it has no name. I, for instance, live in Flowerhill Road, and then there's a Blackhill Road and a Juniper Road in Tallinn."

"How can anyone live in a road?" Helen wondered.

"I don't live in the road, I live in a big nine-storeyed house in Flowerhill Road. It's just a manner of speech."

"You mean that's your address, the name of your street," said Aunt Leida.

"Mother knows everything. She's a teacher," said Helen.

"But what's your address then? Just a road?" asked Irja.

Helen did not know it. But Aunt Leida said that there was no street name in their address, the name of the village was quite enough. One could add also the name of the farm but they were not used much nowadays.

"Is a farm the same thing as a house?" asked Irja.

"Not exactly," replied Aunt Leida. "On a farm there are several buildings — a dwelling-house, a cattle-shed and sometimes a granary or a barn as well as a sauna house."

"What animals live in the granary and in the barn?" Irja asked.

"Mice," said Aunt Leida, smiling. "People don't keep animals in granaries and barns, they store foodstuffs there. In the old days they used to keep grain there. Nowadays country people buy their bread in the grocery, they don't use their granaries for storing grain any more."

"When bread is put into a plastic bag it'll keep fresh longer," said Irja.

"It takes a lot of time and hard work before you can put bread into a plastic bag. First rye is grown in the fields, it has to be harvested at the end of the summer, then it's threshed and the grain is dried — see that big grey building over there, that's where the grain drying is done. After that the grain is winnowed and milled into flour and only then can people bake bread of it."

Irja looked in the direction of the big grey building at the other end of the field. She had tought it was a castle when she first saw it. Yet people dried grain in there. They must have very large towels, she thought.

"How is that drying actually done?" she asked.

"Our grain dryer is now run by electricity. In the old times they heated it with firewood," explained Aunt Leida. "Lectwicity's bad," said Kristjan.

"Of course, if you stick your finger into the socket," said Aunt Leida, hastening her step. Now a two-storeyed brick house could be seen between the trees.

"That's our schoolhouse," said Helen.

There was a bus in front of the schoolhouse and many children were running to and fro. Aunt Leida was greeted at least a thousand times. Now she was calling out, "Second form, come here please." When a lot of boys and girls had gathered around them Aunt Leida said in her teacher's voice,

"Children, today we shall go together with the third form to the Forest field. Who's absent today?"

"Nobody's absent," said a girl with thick auburn plaits. The teacher then counted the children and led them into the bus. When the third-form children with their teacher had also boarded the bus, Aunt Leida found room for Irja and Helen, took Kristjan on her lap and said to the bus-driver, "We can go now."

"Your mother is such an important person," Irja whispered in Helen's ear. "Everybody obeys her."

"Of course, she's a teacher," Helen agreed with a nod.

At first the bus drove all the way back along the road they had walked to the schoolhouse. A little way after Helen's home it turned to the left. The familiar red roof looked even prettier from the distance.

Irja looked out of the bus window. Yellow maples and dark green fir-trees were quickly passing by and they, too, seemed to greet them as was the custom in the country.

"You know what, Helen," Irja turned towards her friend, "let's name this road the Road of Greetings."

***

The potato field where the bus took them was large and hare. One half of the field where potato had been dug out already was brown, dotted with white stones. On the other half of the field that looked a lighter brownish green, the potato stalks were still jutting out of the ground. A tractor was moving over that part of the field followed by a small brown-grey hurricane of earth: whirling in the air there were potatoes, potato stalks, earth and small stones.

Continued in Part 2...

Benjamin Waber

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