"Give it a rest. Aet ... "

"You won't forgive!" Aet was put out. "In words you might but it won't be the real thing, true forgiveness must come from the heart. As for me, I always forgive anyone, however much they've wronged me. I've forgiven everybody even though nobody cares about me. But this way it's even better ... "

In the bleak light of the unshaded overhead lamp she examined the look on her friend's face.

"No, you won't forgive!" die cried out. "You won't! If you came to my place at one o'clock at night. my response would be poles apart. But I forgive you, I forgive everybody ... "

And there she went, posthaste out of the door, clattering down the dark staircase, into the fog.

At once a thick silence descended on the room as if there had never been an Aet with a vast burden of guilt and forgiveness. As if all had been only delusion and fancy.

Inger was sitting arms laced around her knees. Aet's last words began to ring in her ears. For crying out loud, what had got her? What was the worry eating her up?

Inger rose and went to Aet's.

The door stood open, Aet was sitting in the dark kitchen, head in hands. Footsteps brought her from her stupor and when Inger appeared in the doorway, she leapt to her feet.

"You came!"

She wound her arms tightly round Inger's neck and burst into racking tears.

"You see, Inger," she whispered through her tears. "If you hadn't come. I'd have taken them all!" Aet displayed a box of pills clenched in her hand.

Inger felt as if icicles were forming round her heart. "What in the world is the matter with you?"

"It's beyond endurance, I can't ... I've given up everything ... For you I've given up all my acquaintances and friends ... When you ditch me, too ... "

"That's no sort of talk!" With care Inger seated Aet in a chair and stroked her hair. "Nobody has ditched you. He least of all."

"I mustn't love! I can't, mustn't make some other person unhappy!" Anew Aet was overwhelmed by tears. "Friendship will do for me. But if you're going to coldshoulder me, I can leave this place ... "

Again Aet entwined her arms tightly behind 'tiger's neck.

"Kiur was right: I've no motivation to go on living you get me, Inger? I can never love anybody, no man. I'd be a fraud. I mustn't bear children, doctors said ... "

It was the month of November. The heart of darkness was thickening. Thickening into a hard black lump of coal heavy and shiny–and little by little it became incandescent.

In the long break, the whole school being assembled in the assembly hall and the Head pinning badges on the school leavers' breasts, the first snow began to fall. Soova made a speech and the band played. Deeply moved, Inger fingered the lighthouse with its beam of light against the deep blue sea and tead the Avoids engraved on the reverse side of the badge: Form Teacher. This household word suddenly flashed an entirely new facet.

Leisurely she turned from the school-yard into the maple avenue, brief-case in hand, and tilted her face to catch falling snowflakes on her tongue.

The town was light and Sunday-like. Finnish push-sledges, brought down from lofts, haylofts and sheds, had already ploughed lines into the snow on the streets. Children were running, shrieking and frolicking; boys were stuffing snow inside girls' collars.

Why doesn't anybody stuff snow inside my collar? Inger thought and chuckled.

Being just in front of the shop-door, she heard somebody hail behind her,

"Hello, Inger!"

Kiur stood on the runners of a push-sledge, hatless and without overcoat.

"Take a seat!"

And when the girl was totally at sea, repeated,

"Don't be afraid, take this seat!"

Inger lowered herself onto the scat of the push-sledge, put her brief-case on her lap and settled her feet on the bar connecting the runners.

"Where to, ma chere?"

"Anywhere. Never before has anybody given me a ride on a Finnish push-sledge."

"In that case we could make a round of the town."

Kiur swung the sledge round. The runners left a smooth curve in the snow of the square. Inger caught hold of the seat to maintain her balance.

"I listened to the violin today," she said.

"Violin?"

"Yes. In our school."

The runners screeched on the gravel. Kiur gave the seldge a hefty push.

"My mission here has come to an end. By tomorrow the reference note on me will be ready and that's that then. Actually I could have left even today for the reference note could have been sent by post as well, but ... "

"But what?"

"Nothing. I wanted to see you."

Inger was silent.

"I wanted to talk with you."

"About Aet, right?"

"Nope."

Kiur turned the sledge towards the shore, swung it down the slope and stopped short of the ice border. Yonder, behind the snow-white rim of ice, the open water showed inky, in the descending dusk one could discern a vast, chilly sea. In the pasture alders stood in a silent soft snow.

"Like lambs," observed Inger.

"Who so?"

"Those alders in their snow."

"Huh? Er eyes?" Kiur murmured absently.

Inger turned her head. The trainee stood, one foot on the runner the other one in the snow, hands on the back of the scat, gaze fixed in the distance, dwelling on something.

"You're quite blue in the face. Chilled to the marrow. Why didn't you put on your overcoat?"

Kiur hunched his shoulders in a shiver and turned the sledge round to go back to town. It was already abloom with lights, snowflakes scintillating in the light of streetlamps.

In her kitchen the trainee began to build up a fire in the range. His hands were numb, he blew at them and as soon as the unsteady flames began to lick the kindling, he thrust his hands almost into the firebox.

"In half a mo very hot tea's coming up," Inger said.

Remembering Aet's speech pattern, she added with a slight smile, "In half a mo you'll have sonic terrific Indian tea." Kiur was preoccupied and pensive.

"Who'll get your rush curtains?"

"Curtains?" the trainee jumped. "What curtains?"

"Those you were going to make of rush to gain a Japanese effect."

Kiur gave a sigh.

"Didn't go through with it ... Somehow I didn't happen upon suitable stuff." His hands were outright glowing with heat, but he still kept rubbing them. "You didn't come and see anyway."

Inger poured boiling water into the teapot. A puff of steam rose above the range.

"There was no call for it."

"Apropos you weren't especially keen to find any."

Inger carried the teapot to the table and filled the cups.

"Remember? In autumn when I walked you home from the beach, I dearly hoped you'd invite me in for a cuppa. But you didn't get the idea."

"I hadn't got any tea then, only coffee and this, too, didn't amount to anything. It couldn't have bested Aet's."

Kiur sipped at the piping hot tea with due caution.

"Take honey in your tea," said Inger obligingly and pushed the pot of honey nearer.

"Ma chew, I'd like to invite you to Tallinn for the turn of the year. There's nothing to keep you here, anyway: you'd only sit looking out of the window not living it up at all in this dead-and-alive hole! Or are you waiting for somebody? ... From sea?"

Inger shook her head.

Continued in Part XVII...

Christopher Marquet

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