Inger let her eyes wander over the class, the message in her glance clear and loud: if anyone here as much as bats an eyelid, he'll share the same fate.

But on Riina they had made a satirical song that went to the tune of a hit and spread like wildfire as such things are wont to. Whenever during a break Riina had to pass the corridor between the walking pupils, she heard them hum,

"Too short for them was summernight ... ", while the girls snickered secretively.

In the end the thing got quite out of hand. The boys didn't let her teach the class at all, they were noisy and played her up, drew caricatures, sang in a loud voice and made rather unambiguous remarks, They felt they'd been kept behind quite unjustly at that time, and that they couldn't forget and forgive.

At last the form teacher interfered. Vello as the ringleader, his ribald verses as material evidence, was taken to the Head's study to be taken to task. Riina was summoned, too. What was going on there, was kept silent. Only once was Soova's loud voice heard in the corridor, "Don't you dare ... !" And a little while later the young author, his face red with weeping, emerged from the study and waddled to the classroom, tail between legs.

A reprimand by the Head was posted on the notice board in the staffroom as well as in the corridor, announcing that Vello Kuusmaa, a pupil of the fifth "B" was strongly reprimanded for his unseemly behaviour towards his teacher Riina Nuutre.

Boys swarmed around the reprimand, gawped at it and smirked.

When the form teacher saw this, she was in high dudgeon and without delay rushed to the Headmaster. Hadn't she said this simply wasn't done, now a teacher had been put on a par with a pupil for all to see and it was absolutely wrong from the educational point of view.

It goes without saying that the mistake was amended at once. By the beginning of the long break the school secretary had crossed out Teacher Nuutre's name with black x'es in both copies.

Aet was sprawling on the couch in her dressing-gown. On a chair beside her there was a basket with coloured balls of wool and an as yet unfinished front part of a sweater.

"Will the sweater be ready in due time?" Inger asked.

"Why waste time on it, it wouldn't suit me anyway. Where were you last night? I made carrot pasties and waited for somebody to come and taste them, but nobody did."

"You could have come and said."

"I won't call on anybody any more. Nobody seeks me out and I won't either," elucidated Aet. "I wasn't taken along to the sea! ... I'm not told, of course, how it went and what was done ... "

"Don't talk rot," said Inger, jarred by her friend's tone of voice. "Better get yourself dressed and we'll go for a walk. It's simply a postcard beautiful day."

Slowly, without any obvious enthusiasm. Aet began to get some clothes on in preparation for going for a stroll. Time and again she stopped to ponder, there was always something she couldn't find. When Inger offered her help, she bristled, "Thanks a lot, I'm perfectly capable of finding it myself!" and waved her hands.

They walked to the park. A cool and bright sun cast its glittering light through the trees, making the air shimmer warmly. Shadows were shifting across the grass under the lindens and maples. A yellow leaf or two drifted down before the teachers' feet.

"It really were something if somebody was interested in my welfare, too!" Aet gave a wistful and somehow apologetic smile. "I am truly interested in other people, I've always tried to listen to everything I'm told and be sympathetic. But to me, nobody wants to listen. Mother and me have never been on the same wavelength, neither have my sisters, they've always grabbed everything without a thought of me. I was never left anything ... "

At the other end of the park, behind the old chapel, the storm had broken a lot of trees and now there were only stumps there, showing white. The girls sat down, Inger picked up a couple of dappled maple leaves and put them into Aet's lap.

Aet studied sideways Inger's face.

"Cat got your tongue?"

"I'm listening to what you say."

"You know, Inger, I don't fit in well with other people, maybe there's something amiss with me. I've mulled it over and found that nobody needs me. An utterly redundant person, that's me. No, you tell me, who needs me? Can you name one person who'd be sincerely interested in me, who actually needed me?"

"What about your pertinacious admirer?"

"Ah, even he has passed from the picture ... Better this way. I don't intend to go to the bother of mooning any more. This only causes pain ... But that's water under the bridge, I'm going to take no notice of anyone, I've got an entirely new aim now–to perceive reality as a one-hundred-per-cent materialist should. No embellishing. I'm taking first steps in that direction now, I sleep as much as I can. Perhaps it would have been better if you hadn't come either ... I only do my stint of work and don't let my mind wander. When others make good, I rejoice on the quiet, and that's all I need ... "

Aet twirled a colourful maple leaf in her hand.

"If you're going to give everything up yourself ... "

Tears welled up in Aet's eyes. "What's there for me to do? I don't know how to fight my own hand. When somebody else is singled out, I always retreat ... Suppose, for instance, I'm fond of a boy and you like that selfsame boy, too ... " Aet swallowed audibly and then stated decisively, "At any rate I won't rival you!"

In the kitchen of the downstairs tenants' flat, by the open window, rowan-berry wine was fermenting in big bottles. Bubbles were rising plop! and plop! from the seething juice into a knotty glass tube. Beneath the window phloxes and asters were scenting the air.

Inger opened the gate to the yard. The driver backed the dumper truck to the woodshed and noisily dumped the load, lifted his hand in the military salute, bid good day and drove off.

Inger, in her working togs, closed the gate and went towards the woodshed. She had ordered chopped firewood, but as usual one may go and whistle for it. Sturdy logs had only been split, one can't put such hunks into the fire-box. Inger wondered if she could manage by herself or she should throw a small work party and invite the girls and Kiur to give a hand. Just when she was looking for some thinner log she could manage on her own, she heard a hail behind her back.

She turned round.

At the corner of the house stood a tall fair-haired man in the merchant marine uniform, a broad grin on his face.

Whence did that Jaak pop out? The thought of his still unopened letter flashed through her mind and she felt abashed. Fortunately things weren't better with the sailor either. He didn't even make so bold as to shake the girl's hand. He put down. his case, strode wordlessly to the chopping block Inger had rolled out of the woodshed before the truck arrived and, in dead earnest and with all his might, began splitting wood. Inger looked on and thought that if he was going to keep up the good work there wouldn't be any work left for a work party. Jaak picked up a twisted pine log, studied it from both ends, put down the axe, took off his cap and uniform jacket, cast them on the roof of the woodshed, loosened his tie, spat into his palm and with a single powerful swing of the blade split the log. His face was so joyously happy as though during the voyage his only thought had been to come and split wood for Inger.

Inger gathered an armload of freshly split logs and carried it up to the kitchen. On her way up she met Kiur tearing down the stairs.

"I came to invite you to the flicks."

"Wait." Inger took the firewood up.

When she descended, Kiur was already standing in the yard, arms folded across his chest clad in a red-and-black chequered pullover and watched Jaak splitting wood.

Discerning the trainee's arrogant posture, Inger's lips bent into a slight smile.

"What's so funny?" Kiur asked. "That's an old pullover, a swell girl knitted it. By the way, Riina came from Tallinn and is in a fine state of nerves."

Jaak placed the axe flatwise on the block and gave the trainee a long measuring look that made the latter avert his eyes.

"Inger, maybe you'll introduce me to Monsieur ... ?" Kiur muttered.

The sailor rose to his full height and asked Inger in a low but for that the more menacing voice,

"Must I knock the spots off this man?"

The teacher had no copy-book answer to that. With a hurt mien Kiur looked at his watch.

"I must go now ... I'll try and entertain Riina myself then and make company for her."

Armload after armload Inger carried logs into her small, narrow woodshed and wondered what she should make of the thing.

Then she went upstairs, put on a red dress and white apron, broke some eggs and whisked yolks and whites separately frothy. When everything was ready, she winged down the stairs to invite the man to share her lunch.

"You really think so?" asked Jaak with the air of a man who had been about to up and march off. Nevertheless, he put the last logs into the woodshed, pushed the chopping block in, too, picked up the axe and came upstairs.

Inger poured some water into the washbasin and handed him a cake of soap.

At the lunchtable Jaak became tense and stiff, handling his cutlery in silence.

"Why don't they ever serve an omelette as good as that in an eatery?" he asked tersely, as though he were angry. After that for quite a while he didn't utter a single word, but stared transfixed at his plate, and Inger felt as if her tiny comfortable room were full on that hunk of a gloomy man.

Just when she was thinking that, Jaak said in his abrupt way, "Sailor brings a bottle."

And sprang lightly to his feet.

"What for? No need for that."

"Tongues need loosening," replied Jaak and rushed down the stairs. Now the ninny went to the shop, the girl thought. But Jaak was back in almost no time at all, he had only been to the woodshed to fetch his cap, jacket and case. He rummaged a bottle of whisky with a colourful label out of his case and came into the room.

"White Horse? Isn't it?" he pointed his finger at the label and gave a thin smile.

Inger didn't want whisky.

Jaak placed the bottle on the table.

"Let it stand here. Sailor doesn't need it either."

Inger felt embarrassed. What if Jaak resented the neglectful way his present was treated? But the sailor didn't give her time to busy her mind with this and asked,

"How does that grease monkey fit in the picture?"

"How come you know Kiur?"

"Sailor has got nothing to do with that man, but I have no use for him," announced Jaak and for a long time his eyes were glued to the bookshelf.

Then he stood up again and went into the kitchen, opened his small case, rooted around in it and came up with a thick black-covered exercise-book in hand. He stroked gently its rough cover, opened it on the table and, without looking at Inger, as though he were talking to the bookshelf or the gloom, he finally said,

"See here! Physics."

Inger looked at the problems and waited for him to add something by way of explanation. But Jaak sat on, his attitude unchanged, straight and tense all over, dressed in his uniform, stripes of gold braid on its sleeve, stubborn lips clamped together lost in some train of slow, heavy thoughts.

Suddenly he gave Inger a long searching stare, but when the girl met his gaze head-on, his slid away again, becoming distant or withdrawn.

"I intended to enter the Higher Nautical School in Leningrad. But I was late, couldn't get away from the Atlantic."

Inger wanted to comfort him, but before she could find any appropriate words, Jaak said,

"Sailor will push off now. Pals are sitting in the boozer and waiting." He gave the girl an up-and-down look and suddenly grinned, "Classy lady! I'd take you along, but you'll stand out like a sore thumb there."

Continued in Part X...

Christopher Marquet

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