Inger returned to the island in the afternoon. At a brisk pace she crossed the central square of the town, a taste of dust in her mouth, a suitcase in her hand. A mild late-summer sun was warming the sides of houses, trees and asphalt. Two men emerged from the co-op store, the younger one had a flashing tin bath under his arm. They both gave her an amicable smile and although she knew neither of them, it gladdened her heart.

On the sunset side one branch of the maple tree on the edge of the square was already maroon all over as if it had imbibed nothing but the blood red afterglow, the last sap of the sun.

The selfsame tree again, the same way it was last year.

The same tree and I am coming home.

Home from home, from my parents to being on my own. And I must get accustomed to it again. Just now I am a stranger, the same way I was last year.

It was nearly two months that she had been away from here. During the time the wall of aloofness, the foundations of which she was carrying inside her all the time, had again grown into a veritable barrier. She no sooner alighted from the plane than she had to begin tearing it down to restore her former, last-spring approach to life–to be a teacher, a kind of neatly lined paper on which the school puts down its regulations and prohibitions, its fullness and emptiness.

During summertime even her flatlet in the attic had grown strange. Her vase was waterless, grey puffs of fluff perched on top of her wardrobe like swallows on a line.

Everything needed getting in the spirit of, in the habit of, accustomed to.

Painstakingly she fell on airing and tidying, she even rearranged her furniture, that is–shifted her green couch into another corner. On the whole, her stuff didn't amount to much. But even as insignificant a change as that brought about a change of mood. Lastly she hung new curtains at the window and the light became festive, clear.

The afternoon was waning, peaceful, sunlight was streaming from behind the house, sideways, shadows were long. She sat down at the table. As long as it was warm, the table still sat in the window. It was good to sit here, sipping hot coffee, musing, listening and looking out of the window.

For a long time she studied the rowan trees flanking the street on the other side of the fence. They were young fiery trees, full of big scarlet clusters of berries. Beyond, slender aspens towered. Even here, in her room, one could see their spangle-like leaves quivering high up in the crowns. And they were summer-green–as yet, the tin roof of the schoolhouse wasn't glinting through their foliage.

Must tear myself away from summer, still lording it deep within me. Must wean myself from the sun, must accustom myself to the dark so that it wouldn't catch me unawares.

Must come to terms with wind.

The maple tree with its red-hot, autumn-touched branch was hidden by the corner of the house. The maple itself could be seen from the kitchen window, but the maroon branch was hidden from view even there, being on the other side. But Inger could picture in detail what it looked like standing there, out of her sight. She liked that tree, she would have liked to touch it with her hand. Not to tear or break it, only to touch it, just this once, that afterglow-red, sun-sapped tree.

And thus autumn's on the doorstep–the time of fogs, gales and marking of exercise books. Wind will prowl howling round the house, churning in the chimney, rattling the doors, and the schoolhouse will grow more and more visible between the blackened branches of aspens. Then fire will be the staunchest tower of strength. For the sake of warmth and company she will build up a fire in her kitchen range for the radio and the clock alone are not sufficient to fight the endless darkness.

The silence was something singular. It was a small-town end-of-summer hush with every footfall, every clink and clang and clearing of throat audible and all these scant sounds only serving to deepen this quiet, making it more perceptible.

Stillness like balm.

If along that deserted avenue, from beneath that red maple tree came somebody capable of shoving off the signs of the oncoming autumn, laid the palm of their hand on the maple tree so that it became bright green again and uttered a word which would keep winds from keening.

Red sails in the sunset, Inger gave a halfsmile and shook her head.

It was time to get saddled with some kind of activity or other lest she should succumb to longing on her very first day. A longing that awaited her everywhere she went and plucked uneasily at the very strings of her heart. For time was going by and nothing was altered. Then she longed to quit the place because somewhere something inexplicably beautiful might not have been or come into being if she wasn't on the spot. And that were, indeed, a great pity.

She took down a book she had just unpacked from her case and fitted on to the shelf and was soon deep in it. Against some sentences she pencilled a mark. They reflected something applicable to herself and she intended to return to them again at some later date.

Yes, to live unpredictably, not cramped by irresolution, always having the courage of choice, of casting the die, of being one's true self. How should one perceive the fullness of life in any set of circumstances so that there were no empty days, hibernation or numbness? So that soul, body and intellect were involved all in the same breath. So that she could live now, actually, this very day–not in some vague forlorn waiting, in a daydream.

At this moment she heard someone's hurried footfalls coming up the creaky stairs. Somebody had already got wind of her being back.

It was her friend Aet who taught elementary school.

Soulfully she scanned Inger's face, so tanned, rested and of such a lovely complexion–sweet enough to eat. Aet's eyes were starry like a little girl's, surveying her pet doll she hadn't clapped eyes on for ages.

"It's a dream of a sweater," she commended. "It sets off the blueness of your eyes. Did you knit it yourself?"

Inger nodded her head and pivoted smoothly on her heel so that her white pleated skirt swirled about the knees.

"Let's go over to my place now. Riina promised to come, too ... And Kiur."

"Kiur who?"

Aet went red.

"A trainee of sorts ... "

Riina was already there, sitting in the rocking chair and coasting gently backwards and forwards, her legs in beige slacks crossed, entirely at home.

Aet's devoted eyes of a true friend flicked over her, too.

"Trousers are just the thing for a tall person," she chirped. "You could get away with shorts, too. They wouldn't be a bad fit either."

"Do you think I'd run the risk of parading them under the Head's nose? Well enough he tolerates trousers. Once upon a time, the story goes, he used to spit and fume at any trouser-clad woman, let alone a woman-teacher."

The girls gave a giggle.

"Oh my, Inger. I'd like you to know Kiur. Kiur, Inger," said Aet, flustered, turning to a young man with an unruly thatch of hair who was standing by the window and listening to their chitchat, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

The stranger gave a small bow and said with slight mockery, "A budding grease monkey from the Tallinn Polytechnical Institute."

Aet clicked the door of the sideboard open and thrust her head in as if she were about to crawl bodily in among the bottles of scent and nail polish. She lifted a half-full bottle of brandy on to the table and slipped into the kitchen. Quite soon, over the whirr of the coffee-grinder, her voice proclaimed.

"In half a mo you'll taste some terrific coffee! In summer I was brought a easeful of factory-packed coffee beans from Tallinn ... "

Inger bustled busily between the sideboard and the table, selecting red placemats from the drawer and spreading them on the low coffee-table.

"Ma chere Inger, can I be of any help?" Kiur moved a bowl of apples and an ashtray to one side. Placing bell-shaped cups on their black triangular saucers, Inger felt with her back the young man's eyes following her about. Kiur's blue eyes seemed to take greedily in and commit to memory everything, as if he were on some exotic island, bound to take careful note of the natives' way of life, their customs, their ways of setting the table and making conversation.

Aet breezed in, steaming coffee-pot in hand. She poured the coffee with due concentration and care and yet the porcelain pot dripped all over the mat. Riina seconded Aet in cussing out the awkward pot, and the student poured a measure of brandy into the snifters.

"Here's to three beautiful ladies and the beginning of a new school-year." Kiur looked them Box and Cox deep in the eye.

The glasses were raised in silence. May health endure the long nerve-raking school-year, for it was in the lap of the gods what could come to pass during that time.

Riina sighed, unhooked her dark green fringed bag from the back of her chair and brought out a packet of cigarettes. Kiur hastened to flick his tiny pistol-shaped lighter.

"The timetable is too daft for words this year," fulminated Riina. "On Monday there's a gap of two periods, on Tuesday I've got two one-period gaps, and on Friday there are altogether three. I'd like to know what I'm supposed to do with them."

"Sit in the staffroom and mark exercise books," said Inger casually.

"Exercise hooks! But there are some with no gaps at all!"

"Some have got a family and children."

"Must I then go and get pregnant to get rid of the gaps in the timetable?"

"Why not?" said Kiur.

"Hey, look here, young man," Riina was bristling. "What do off know about children? You only bed a girl, have a quickie and that's that. It won't be you who'll change and pot the infant ... And as if there were a place too ... "

"Let's turn to some other, more Sunday-like, subject," Aet cut in. She already knew where it would take her friend.

"At your service. Aet, sports? Or would the ladies be interested in love poetry?"

Without waiting for an answer, Kiur took from the shelf behind him a book by Omar Khayyam, opened it at random, and read.

"I drink, but not to swill and sink my sorrows–cede it.

If not my precious cup of wine what else I greeted?

And still I drink a little more than needed lest I like you should ever sneering be, conceited."

"You're addressing who?" Riina blew out a stream of smoke and looked into the student's suddenly gleaming blue blue eyes. "Which of us is sneering or conceited, pray?"

Kiur put the book down on the corner of the table beside his coffee-cup.

"No one," he grinned. "The three of you are all cordial and just super, one can't begin to compare you, no buts about it. With you one feels so good and at home. One could marry any of you without delay." From among the petits fours in the bowl he picked out one of the crumbliest and put it into his mouth. "But in this one-eyed hole you'll go to seed. Why beat about the bush? All of you have passed the age of consent, be fair and square and say, hand over heart, who'll throw his lot in with you? You're young highly educated women, salt of the earth, you make high demands on yourselves as well as on others. If not before, then at least during your college-years you grew urbanized, turned to townees, city girls of Tallinn or Tartu, to be exact–and to marry some tractor driver or sailor is not your cup of tea. But who can you consider in the running here? In the whole wretched town there's only one young unmarried doctor and he, too, is surrounded by a bevy of nurses. Girls, girls, my heart bleeds for you. Honour bright, for you I'd do any little thing at all!"

"Why don't you? Hot air, that's what it is," there was sting in Riina's voice. "You're only salting our shared secret wound, scattering big grains of salt on it ... "

Baffled, Kiur gazed at Riina. Had he injured somebody's feelings? For crying out loud, what if he called a spade a spade? His blue watercolour eyes assessed the girls and came to rest on Aet. Looking her deep in the eye, he said,

"Let's take you, Aet. What if I started going steady with you myself?"

Aet's round face flamed hotly, glowing through the haze of smoke like an occluded full moon. Moist with excitement, she hurriedly stumbled to her feet and picked up the coffee-pot although there was still enough coffee in it. The trainee's appreciative eyes followed her nice amphora-shaped legs when she slipped through the narrow doorway like a letter into the slot of a letter-box.

Silence descended on the room.

The revving of a car in the square became clearly audible. The starter gave a long, desperate roar. From beneath came the sound of footsteps on the asphalt. Somewhere a bird screeched and in this way got fixed upon a moment in the humming flow of time.

Inger got to her feet and took an apple from the bowl. "There is a way to overcome loneliness," she said in a low voice, giving it a sly stress.

Aet entered the room with freshly-brewed coffee. In the meanwhile she had found time to comb and fluff up her waxy hair, pulling a wisp of it on her forehead. Bustling round the table, as much in trouble with her recalcitrant porcelain pot as ever, she gave her all in trying to meet the trainee's gaze, he, however was flipping through the pages of a manual of psychology and might have, at that, lit on some essential phrase or passage worth to be stored up.

They all seemed to be in waiting.

Inger swallowed up her bite of apple and, standing as if on stage or facing her class, spoke in a clear well-modulated voice,

"A moment ago our esteemed student here made a statement, saying he'd be ready to do anything for any of us. Right away we'll give him an opportunity to demonstrate his goodwill. And we're going to do it in such a way as to relieve him of the necessity to make a choice. We'll deal him out."

A flush crept over the trainee's angular features, his cropped curly hair became even more unruly than usual.

Continued in Part II...

Christopher Marquet

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