"Why didn't you when they were so nicely offered?" The girls were silent.

"Whose acquaintances were they? Whose boy-friends?" Meeli blew her nose and said reluctantly,

"They asked for my elder sister."

"And then?"

"My sister wasn't at home. They said they'd wait."

"So they simply entered other folks' flat, sat down at the table and started hitting the bottle? A likely tale!" the Head scoffed.

The girls nodded: yes, that's exactly how it was.

"And quite calmly you let them take their seats? Were enjoying pleasant company?"

"I told them to go away, but they didn't," uttered Meeli "Sailors will stay put, the taller one said and the other one only grinned," detailed Urve.

"Why were you, Urve, at your friend's this late at all so that your mother had to come and look for you?"

"Meeli and me, we were doing maths. I was just ready to go home and then those men came and sat down there and Meeli begged me not to leave."

"So that numbers were even, eh?"

That was too much, that was jeering. Inger wanted to jump up, but couldn't, she was bound hands and feet. Educational principles forbade her to interfere, to criticise a colleague–least of all the Head–in the presence of pupils.

"I was afraid of being left alone with those men," said Meeli. "Why didn't you turn them out, then?" Soova burst out. "They wouldn't go, I've told you," Meeli replied.

"Don't you dare to show fight! On what terms are you with those men, sailors or whatever?"

Soova turned to Inger, snorting,

"Can you imagine that strange men come in at the door, take a tumbler from the shelf and begin putting it away and don't go away when asked to?"

"Yes, I can," Inger answered softly.

This was something the Head hadn't allowed for, now it was he who was caught in a cleft stick by educational principles, although he'd have kicked Teacher Uunvald out with sheer joy. Because for him it was beyond belief that a man, drunk as a lord, could come knocking at the door of a girl with any self-esteem at all, let alone sit down and start drinking. And if Teacher Uunvald could imagine that, she'd get what was coming to her–in every sense of the word.

The situation was saved by the bell.

"Go to your lesson, we'll thrash this thing out later."

"If it will be discussed again this way, I'll quit school," said Meeli and burst into tears.

Abruptly Soova gave them his back.

The girls weeping ahead, the teacher behind, they left the study. In the empty staffroom Inger took a class register from the shelf, she had a lesson.

"I'll quit this school, I can't bear it any more," Meeli repeated, swallowing tears.

"At the staff meeting they'll start it all over again, jeering and putting on the screws, the same as today," sobbed Urve. "What have we done then?"

A suffocating lump caught in Inger's throat. She withered with shame before these girls: she was incapable of changing anything! I will quit, too, suddenly crossed her mind. If anything it was humiliation, pure and simple! Even if the girls were to blame for anything they shouldn't be talked to like that. And first of all Soova ought to have informed her.

Inger stroked the girls' hair, one fair and one dark mane. The girls smiled at her with their blotchy faces. They were trying hard to bite back the tears.

At the vessel with drinking water all three took out their handkerchiefs, soaked them under the tap and mopped their faces.

They were girls–all three of them.

"Let's go now!" Inger said at last. And so they did go, all three, into their own class, the eleventh.

Throughout the rest of the day Inger deliberated what to do.

After school hours Soova came upon her in the corridor. Reaching her side, he stopped, scrutinized the teacher with sharp intent eyes, so that she felt embarrassed, and said quietly.

"Go and have a talk with that mother. Make her come and ask me not to discuss it at the staff meeting. And let it stay between ourselves."

Inger caught herself tarrying. This visit was against the grain with her. Always, going and having a talk with parents, she felt as if she were trying to teach her granny to suck eggs.

She was acquainted with Urve's mother and knew the situation in their home. That woman never failed to turn up at parent-teacher meetings and followed everything with rapt attention. She and her two daughters lived in one and only narrow room with a wood stove. In the middle of the room there was a round table covered with oil-cloth. At it, under a faded lamp-shade siblings Urve and Rut were making their homework, both dark and big boned like their mother who was pouring peeled potatoes from a bowl into a pot.

Inger remained standing by the door.

Without haste mother dried her hands on a towel hanging from a peg, came to meet the teacher and gave her large swollen hand.

Greeting over, there was an awkward pause. It did touch on a very delicate subject, how to start?

Urve's helpless begging eves were trained on Inger's face. Rea, too, a fifth-former, looked up from her Estonian exercise and. cast a thrilled glance at the teacher, but then lowered her eves again on the book.

"I came to talk about that thing."

The woman motioned at Inger to take the empty chair at the table.

"Well, go ahead."

The teacher nodded, lowered herself slowly on the seat offered and threw an embarrassed look around, trying to collect her thoughts.

The woman noticed her wandering glance and said.

"We don't have any other place to go to. Here we all live like sardines in a box. And what's there to hide? Let them hear and learn." And she inclined her head towards her daughters.

But that was something Inger couldn't agree with.

"Maybe the girls will leave us nevertheless for a short while." she said, addressing her words more to the children than their mother.

Reet stood up. Urve, whose face hadn't lost yet its former helpless expression, still hovered.

"Where are you going?" mother inquired gruffly.

"To Meeli's."

"Haven't I told you time and again not to have anything to do with such like," the woman ranted at her. "Sit you here, stick it out!"

"It would be better if you left us alone," Inger put forth. Urve flung on her threadbare coat and with a feeling of relief scuttled through the door.

The woman sat down at the table on the chair vacated by her elder daughter, clasping her hands loosely on her lap, face as tense, watchful and sulky as before.

"What do you have against Meeli? They've been friends since kindergarten days, as far as I know."

"Everybody knows what kind of girl Meeli's sister is."

"You do believe hearsay then?"

"There's no smoke without fire," the woman said grumpily. "Now she's leading my daughter astray too."

"How conic?" was Inger surprised.

The woman burst out with barely controlled anger.

"How could I know what they've been up to!"

Inger looked fully at her face. The woman had grey, somehow lean eyes where capillaries showed red like crimson cracks.

"Please, let's try and speak more calmly. What actually happened? Would you mind telling me what exactly you saw there? Why didn't you tell me? At once, even if it was Sunday, you know well where I live. It's me who's Urve's form teacher. But what you did was to rush to the Komsomol Headquarters without even talking with Urve herself."

Touched to the raw, the woman fidgeted on the chair.

"What's the use of talking with Urve? I'm a woman on my own, I've got no strength to bridle them. And when? Every day at work," the woman defended herself, offended. "It's school who should see about that."

"That's why I'm here."

"Well, talk to her then, make her feel ashamed, do something!"

"Why should she feel ashamed?"

"How could I know what they do there." the woman repeated doggedly. "Urve doesn't tell me anything."

"Could be you yourself arc to blame for her not telling you. Why will you be at once looking for some king-sized jabberwock?"

"My place of work is far away. They are entirely on their own here. I don't know anything. I'm bringing up my two daughters single-handed. One fine day a little one will be brought home, that's how it goes."

Continued in Part XIII...

Christopher Marquet

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