It was only a twist of thought, pointless, rambling, one of the pictures crowding her life, helping her to bear fog and darkness.

"Let's toast Kiur's health!" said Aet, letting her eyes cautiously wander over Inger's face. She kept a weather eye open because she considered herself answerable for Inger's moods and whims as well.

The goblets were raised lackadaisically. The home-made wine was mellow, the kringel toothsome but despite all that they all were somehow grouchy.

"By the way, it was announced over the air that a fisher of a significant number had had an enormous catch in honour of the October holidays. Did you hear it, girls?"

Nobody had heard it. Even Inger, who the barb had been aimed at, paid Kiur's words no heed.

It doesn't begin to chug, not a snowball in hell's chance, maybe it's the fuel that's at fault?

Kiur went into the tiny entrance hall and pulled a bottle of whisky from his coat pocket.

"You can take a White Horse anywhere," he said, opening the bottle.

In a jiffy these ladies will be provided with some high-grade combustible!

"Thanks, I'll better keep to wine," said Inger.

Kiur shrugged his shoulders.

"Tastes differ. Although your taste, by the way, is rather strange."

Aet brought cold meats and salad from the kitchen.

"For Heaven's sake, girls, let's do something, let's relax and make merry. I can't understand what's the matter with us," she wailed.

"We're getting on in years, what else," Riina trotted out. "How we used to dance in my salad days!"

Aet pushed a button on her radio set. Riina and Inger jumped a yard at the blaring fox trot.

The student gave Aet a formal how. "May I have the pleasure?"

The others sat in silence, they had nothing to talk about. Besides, the recent clash at the staff meeting was still rankling. True, it had been only a miff easily surmounted with a couple of humorous sentences, but Inger didn't feel like talking.

I'm on the verge of losing my sense of humour. It's a sign of congealment. And instead of humour one will acquire a chitin shell, a chitin shirt, a chitin skirt, a chitin sweater. Then I'll be a real beetle and won't grow in any direction. "Why mope? A lovely girl such as me!" said Mina, crushed her cigarette out and rose to tap Aet on the shoulder.

Aet came back to Inger, glowing and flushed.

"It's strange and painful to see you sitting like that. You aren't your usual bubbly self. Has somebody been unkind?" Inger shook her head.

"All the evening you haven't once looked me in the eye, you're avoiding my eyes, you're avoiding me! Have I hurt you somehow? Maybe Pm too pushy and you don't want to be friends with me any more?"

Inger considered what to say. Aet was so unhappy and kept gushing over friendship in a strange manner. Like some fifth-former: you don't want to play with me any more, you're friends with another girl now, I'll hate you all my life.

"I beg of you, don't say I'm childish and see all things larger than life," said Aet as if she had read Inger's mind. "Can't people ever be on the same wavelength?"

They had enlarged on wavelengths and understanding since that blizzard night. Aet had spoken then about a piece of bread and butter her mother had never failed to sprinkle with salt, unable to remember that her youngest daughter couldn't abide bread and butter sprinkled with salt and how then Aet, struck to the soul, had gone to the woods to eat her piece of bread and butter there, dissolving into tears of anguish and despair. Yes, they had talked of understanding many a time until the dead of night. And when once again Aet implored for understanding, Inger felt a twinge of suspicion: what, exactly, should she understand? Could there still be anything some incident or fact in her friend's life she hadn't heard about and thoroughly analyzed?

Aet sat looking at her with imploring eyes, waiting for her answer.

"Understand why not, but even understanding mustn't be overtaxed," said Inger, her voice more on edge than she'd have wanted it to be.

Aet's glance became misty, for a long time she concentrated on a point on the table and then, in a low voice, professed.

"You know, I've got a feeling that today do something really batty."

She filled her goblet with neat whisky and drank it up at a gulp as if defying somebody.

"Don't drink like that!" Inger besought.

"What else am I to do when nobody cares about me."

Just then Kiur and Riina were doing some undefinable dance. He heard Aet's words, saw Riina back to her place and came to the table.

"Aet, my sweet, who doesn't care about you? Don't talk rot!"

"Of course they don't, nobody cares about me," explained Aet with wistful calm. "I ain't reproaching anybody with anything but that's a fact! ... You'd better give me a fag! And my glass is empty, too!"

"These shortcomings're easy to fix." Kiur took the whisky bottle from the table.

"She's had a glassful already," Inger mentioned.

"Want more!"

And again the birthday boy poured out the high-grade combustible.

Riina passed Aet a cigarette and Kiur, apt to be at any number of places at once, thumbed his pretty gun-shaped lighter.

Aet puffed amateurishly at her cigarette, exhaling blue smoke kneading her cigarette between her damp fingers, eyes blurred and oddly brilliant. The trainee lowered himself on the couch beside her.

"Nobody cares about me," Aet went on in her former calm wistful tones. "You're sitting here only because there's fog outside and you've got no other place to go to. Everybody's thinking only about themselves and their affairs, how to quicker get away from here. Inger's thinking about poetry or a higher substratum of matter, for her this whole evening's been nothing hut dry rot. Riina's thinking about her husband and that, too is quite natural. Kim's thinking about his Institute and slim girls and that however soon he'll get back to Tallinn won't be soon enough."

"What are you on about, Aet?"

"Isn't it so?"

"How in the world could I be thinking of others when it was you I was to partner round?"

Aet had already made short shrift of one cigarette and with trembling fingers was extracting another one from the packet and once again Kiur had to dig out his lighter. For him it was more a showpiece than commodity for he wasn't a smoker himself. It was a prop to demonstrate his social graces with.

"You were?"

"Haven't you noticed then, that it's you and only you I'm dancing attendance on all the time?" Kiur expounded, deliberately wrapping an arm round Aet's waist. On you and no other, sweetheart. You are constantly on my mind, it's clear as day to all and sundry, only you won't see what's under your nose. Aet my love, how can you?"

Aet gave a crooked smile.

"Only you've got to give up smoking. You aren't cut out for it."

"I'll do as I please, I don't care a hoot what you or anybody else is thinking of me."

"Why drag at it if you don't know how!" For one reason or other Kiur began to get uptight. "Cut it! In my book a smoking woman is something preposterous. Haven't you really anything better to do? A woman is something different, something distinct!" For a moment Kiur was silent. "A woman is a grace, a madonna, it's her duty to feed and lull her baby." His blue eyes went grey and sharp with vexation. "Cut it, I tell you! D'you want I get you pregnant? When you've got a little mite at your breast your life will be worth living."

Aet crushed the stub out in the ashtray and catapulted from the couch as if the movement had released a steel spring from its socket. Her empty whisky-glass fell to the floor, rolled a short way, came up against the leg of the armchair with a clink and splintered. Before the others had time to take fright, Aet had pulled the window open and scrambled up on the window sill.

The trainee's reaction was prompt. In less than a moment he was beside the girl, his arms round her waist. Aet fought back with all her might, yelling,

"Let me go! Let me be! I can't take it any more! Let me go this very minute, you hear me! I'll jump out of the window! I'll jump head first! You all are hurting me! Let me go! Let me be!"

She tried desperately to free herself from the student's clutching arms, kicking, thrashing her arms and butting. Kiur dragged her away from the window, his right hand trying to pry loose the girl's fingers clutching at the shutter.

"Let me go!" Aet panted. "Let me go at once!"

She sank her teeth into the trainee's arm, His features writhed in pain he clamped his teeth with a click and delivered a stinging slap across the girl's face. Aet let go of the handle the window thumped her girl went slack, her head dropped and, silent tears streaming down her face, she turned the other cheek.

Kiur lifted her down from the window and with great care led her to the couch, covered her with an afghan and sat down beside the girl. He stroked soothingly her wax-coloured hair and signalled Inger and Riina to go away.

The girls hovered inquiringly in the doorway. Can Kiur really manage on his own or will he need some help?

But Kiur didn't need any help.

From the inner pocket of his blue-grey pencil-striped jacket he fished a clean neatly folded handkerchief and began to wipe away Aet's anguished tears. With his free hand he motioned the girls to leave.

"Don't leave me alone!" sobbed Aet. "Don't leave me alone! Please! I can't take it!"

The fog had shrouded the town entirely it had faded out of existence. There was only an endless wall of thick chill autumn fog, life flickering low in the depths of it and only legs knew where to go. You weren't able to see anything, or hear either, it was as if everything were shut out by a hank of low lying clouds. Only when Riina had vanished into her flat and Inger was crossing the square did she perceive a milky shimmering spot in the wall of fog: an October party was in full swing in the eating-place.

No sooner had she arrived home and hung her coat on a hook than she heard Aet's swift nervous footfalls coming up the stairs.

Face red with recent exertion, eyes glittering, she began gasping out her apologies.

"I was a disgrace to you, forgive me! I made a complete fool of myself, acted a clown ... But I did want to amuse you. Of late your eyes have been so sad although not long ago you were like a rainbow! I do dig how foolish it was but I couldn't, wasn't capable of taking it any longer! Forgive me, Inger!"

Inger pushed a chair toward her, Aet, however, wouldn't sit down.

"I can't, I've messed up everything! Now you're through with me! Now I haven't got a single friend, I stand all alone in the world. I'm forsaken by everyone. Everything's gone to pot."

"Aet, don't talk like that, please. You've had a spot too much to drink. Try and calm down a little. Let's talk ... "

"You haven't told me yet whether you're going to forgive me or not! ... If you don't, Inger, then, yes, I'll start drinking. there's no other way for me of getting away from it all. I'll do nothing but drink and won't go to school. No skin off my nose, who'll need me?! Let then Soova come carping, or the Head of the Education Department himself, it'll cut no ice with me.

Continued in Part XVI...

Christopher Marquet

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