To light the candles on the tree once again or rather throw it out? School holidays weren't over yet, but Inger knew, having experienced it in the years gone by, that as long as the tree stood in the corner of her room, she wouldn't get into the right mood for work for the fir tree exuded inescapably something Sunday-like, holiday-like.

But it was already shedding its yellowish-green needles scattering them upon the floor, it had to be thrown out.

But it was a very pretty tree, this year Inger had an exceptionally beautiful tree, her boys had brought it. Inger viewed every tree with respect, it could be crooked, with widely spaced branches or with branches only on one side, ornaments made every tree beautiful, even a juniper Inger had had to make do with in lieu of a fir tree two years back.

This, however, was really a very lovely tree, Inger hadn't the heart to chop it into lengths and burn in the range. She had already got used to the tree, grown one with it and there was room enough for a tiny tree in her room, it could well stand there sonic more days.

Just when she was mulling it over and deliberating, Toomas and Urmas came up the stairs. This staircase was like a bridge between Inger's inner and outer self, a link with the outside world; sometimes it proffered even interesting people.

"You haven't gone away, Teacher!" the boys rejoiced.

"Seems so, doesn't it?"

The boys were embarrassed, but only for a minute.

"Teacher, let's go on a skiing trip tomorrow!" cried Urmas. "Everybody is going, the entire class! At least those who are in town.''

And now Inger was making sandwiches in the kitchen. The sun hadn't come up yet, a chilly blue semi-light was reigning outside, a fire was cracking in the range. She cut a slice of bread, spread it with butter and sandwiched with sausage. She could never get through such a heap of sandwiches by herself. But she knew well enough that if she didn't bring such a lot, the pupils would give her half of theirs, going without themselves. And she, of course, is expected to accept everything and cat up or she wouldn't be considered mannerly and certainly the number of sandwiches would be much greater than that of the sandwiches on her table. Like last spring when they went on an excursion. They no sooner had got on the coach than the girls unpacked all kinds of goodies and munched away; seeing their form teacher sitting idle, they had her lap soon heaped with eats.

The backpack turned out to be big and unaccustomedly heavy. For a long time, for years, to be exact, Inger hadn't gone on any trips in winter. Somehow there had been no occasion, partly one could shift the blame on a couple of snowless winters they had recently had.

Cramming her cardigan into the rucksack she all of a sudden remembered her old maths master, an old man, small and lonely with a tricky heart who was fond of company and, attending form parties, always brought a big bag of sweets and danced with all the girls in turn. Suddenly she saw her late teacher in a totally new light, something gentle and humane was radiating from him through the years. Soon she, Inger, will be like him herself, quite soon–an aging lonely bachelor girl, whose strivings to communicate with younger generations will be a bit pathetic and ludicrous to look at. Wind was her only companion on this island, in this room.

To fight her blue mood she turned on her radio and fell to listening a Mozart violin concerto. She dropped into the armchair, curled up, tucked her feet in thick woollen socks under her and for a long time went on sitting in this way, not stirring. She was in readiness, her blue bulging backpack on the chair in the kitchen, any minute now Urmas was to come with her skis he had yesterday taken away with him to be tarred.

The room was full of bluish hope-giving January light. It was searing cold outside, chilly wisps of mist were floating over the town in the pre-dawn. From the end-chimney of the schoolhouse, from the Head's rooms, smoke was rising plumb up. Soova no doubt was heating his stove or making coffee. Inger remembered that the Head, though not exactly an old man, had a well-developed sweet tooth; on Teachers' Day as well as his birthday he treated teachers to sweets, on his birthday he had had even two bags of sweets. Inger recalled how last year on Soova's birthday she had mischievously asked him if they couldn't change the two bags–they the colleagues, might prefer the sweets in that other hag he had secreted to his office. Then Soova had said a little sheepishly that in that other bag in his office there were much cheaper sweets–intended for his nephews and nieces.

But why couldn't Inger Uunvald get up from her armchair go and bring Soova her morning greetings, and have a cup of coffee and a chat? Or go and listen to some good music for the Head had a big collection of records. What deterred her, shackled her?

She didn't know Soova, they were strangers, this provided the answer.

Toomas came, somehow troubled and hesitant.

"I don't know, Teacher, whether we'll go skiing today or not."

"Aren't they in a position to put us up at the place we wanted to stop and spend the night?"

"Er, no." the boy drawled. "everything is all right on that score, but it's cold ... No less than 25 degrees centigrade below zero."

"What's your angle then?"

"Ours? We, of course, should like to go. Boys ... and Meeli and Juta ... But you'd be frozen."

Inger began to pull on her heavy skiing boots. Toomas sent her rucksack a measuring look and asked just in case,

"Teacher, you've taken another pullover with you, haven't you? And some protective lotion for your face?"

Inger broke into laughter.

"How nicely you're taking care of me, Toomas!"

The boy was a little abashed and preceded her down the stairs. Urmas with her tarred skis was already waiting at the gate. They adjusted their skis, crossed the square and turned into the highway. At the cross-roads the other three were waiting, hopping and skipping with cold, their skis slapping the ground. Toomas headed the line, leaving a trail in the snow. From time to time the boys took turns at the lead, the snow was powdery and made them break out in a sweat.

Fiery, glowing with frosty light, the sun climbed higher between the low coastal pines. Sharp frost pinched the skiers' cars and cheeks. Inger pulled her wool cap down over her cars. The woods were still and stiff, the only movement being produced by the swishing skis.

Skiing down a slope, Inger was dragged backwards by her backpack and made to land on her beam-ends. Urmas, being the last in the line, helped her to her feet and advised,

"Teacher, one should lean forward. Haven't you ever gone skiing with a backpack?"

Inger shook her head. Urmas helped her to brush snow from her clothes and bolstered up her ego,

"Never mind, this year your speed is much better than last year."

Inger had her work cut out to keep pace with her pupils. These were impatient, anxious to reach the dunes as fast as humanly possible to get some down-hill skiing. On trips of this kind Inger's way was to ski leisurely, meditatively, to watch scenery, a tree or a house, to turn in at empty abandoned farmhouses, to sense the happiness and horror of loneliness.

At last they reached the hills, dunes by right. The snow swishing, the boys raced down the steep slope, the girls hesitatingly following them with their eyes. They didn't have the nerve to try and looked at their teacher expecting her to come to their help.

Inger chickened out, too, she hadn't gone skiing for ages, let alone down-hill skiing. She knocked snow from under her heel with a pole, although her ski was already fairly clean.

"Meeli, you go!"

"Go yourself, Juta you've got more pluck!"

"But you're older!"

And as if arranged beforehand, they both suddenly turned to their teacher,

"Teacher, you must go! You're used to hills, you come from Southern Estonia."

"Oh. it's way back I went skiing in the hills," Inger excused herself. "Now I'm a lily-livered lame duck."

The girls giggled.

Urmas, half way up the slope, yelled.

"Teacher! Now's your last chance to show you aren't!"

There was nothing for it but to go. The dune wasn't so very high but the trail had a tricky curve that Inger wasn't equal to. Speed took her down-hill in a straight line, she got stuck in bushes and landed head-on in the snow, her legs knotting, one ski bumping the back of her head. From afar one could see only a head in a red cap in the swirling snow. She scrambled to her feet, her head throbbing her hip giving her more than a bit of misery, being undoubtedly black and blue. Both girls falling too, and notably sooner to boot was her only consolation. They didn't reach even the willows but sank on their hack-sides already on the brow of the hill and snorted in the snow like horses.

Toomas managed to find a lower dune for Inger and the girls, more in keeping with their abilities where they could practise down-hill skiing to their heart's content with no fear of taking a tumble.

In the afternoon they arrived at the small village-school where they were to stay overnight. The school attendant, who lived next door screened by a high woodpile, brought the key and apologized that the rooms were cold, but there were logs enough, they could take them and heat the rooms as warm as they wanted to.

In the kitchen the water in the bucket was frozen solid. Urmas took the bucket into the yard, knocked at its bottom and a bluish-green block of ice fell into the snow.

In the chilly classroom Inger changed her clothes, exchanging her rimy pullover and shirt for dry ones, and went into the kitchen. It wasn't a whit warmer here yet, although Urmas kept cramming logs into the range. Urmas watched Inger skipping from foot to foot, knocking her heavy skiing boots together, shoved in a couple of logs more, opened the door of the oven, checked the temperature inside with his hand, gave Inger another look as if taking her measure, pulled the table nearer to the range and said,

"Take off your boots, sit down on the table and put your feet into the oven."

The girls came into the kitchen to cook macaroni and make tea they had provisioned.

And then the whole ski-party was sitting in the kitchen around the burning range talking. The range kept burning, from time to time it was refilled with fir wood: it was warm and cosy, Toomas was carving something out of a piece of pine-bark.

"Urmas, you'd better tell us how you clad Andres in a girl's dress," the girls tittered, stirring tea in their tin mugs.

"Well, mum and dad had promised to bring us a little sister, I longed to have a sister as well. Now then, at long last, they did bring a little one–but it wasn't one, there were two little boys. I told my mum they'd barter at least one of them for a sister, but mum didn't let me even touch them, However, Andres looked exactly like a girl, he had long fair hair–well maybe not exactly long, but at any rate longer than mine–and on the whole he was gentler by nature. I thought I'd clothe him in a girl's dress and that's that, but there wasn't any fitting dress in our house. Mum's were too big. What a letdown! Well, then I thought girls could wear trousers, too. I hunted in the wardrobe for mum's beautiful headsquare and the next morning, before leaving for the kindergarten, I tied it around Andres' head, telling him on the way: now your name's Anne, don't you forget it, if you remember, you'll always get my share of sweets, too. Andres agreed, he was four and I was five, he had to obey."

"Our kindergarten teacher was so puzzled, asked why Andres was wearing a headsquare, what was the matter with him," expounded Meeli who remembered the episode, too. All of them knew each other from a child, having attended the one and only kindergarten in town together.

"Urmas made plain that Andres had an earache, but Andres at once spilled the beans: from now on he'll be Anne and will get sweets for it," juta remembered. 'There were many funny things happening to us there right along."

"One could easily become desirous to return to the kindergarten," Toomas bantered, still carving away at his piece of bark.

"I didn't like my kindergarten," said Inger. "There was a huge brown tiled stove there, I used to cower in the corner behind it and cry, because I was taken away from home, given away ... "

"Teacher, haven't you been spirited away now?" Urmas asked.

"I surely have."

"It must be right boring for you on this here island ... "

Inger sighed and didn't reply. She didn't feel bored, bored was not the word.

"Everybody's taken away, given away."

Before going to bed, they had a pillow-fight at the hostel where they had put up. The room was full of fluff as though down was being plucked from the wings of some gigantic bird. Inger romped, too, in a self-abandoned way, until a pillow thrown by Urmas struck her head so that her bruised back of the head banged into the wall. That brought the horseplay to an end. Urmas brought in a small bowlful of snow for a cold compress and sighed, "Why ever should it always be you, Teacher, who gets bumped ... " Afterward Inger lay abed for a long time, a cold compress on the back of her head, listening to the quiet breathing of her sleeping pupils. It was hot in the room, the paint on the stove was down-right stinking–Toomas had heated it this much. Inger was keeping watch: she hadn't ventured to close the damper, although by all appearances the fire had burned down to embers.

In the morning when Inger entered the kitchen, Toomas' pine-hark boat was already finished and he handed it to Inger with an affable smile.

"Teacher, it's for you to replace the one we had to take apart the day before yesterday according to Soova's orders." "Come again?" Inger didn't get it.

"The Fortune ... In the hall."

"All, that one!" Inger's face broke into a smile.

The weather was overcast and it seemed that the cold spell was going to break. But by the time they had had their coffee and packed their things ready to leave, the skies had cleared again and the sun was out. The frost was as biting as before.

For their return trip they had chosen a longer route along the coast. Joking, they changed the foremost skier, their trail blazer, Inger never being allowed to take the lead. Toomas, more than the others, was able-bodied and tough as nails, his brawn made the whole party gawk. If you were like that at school, I'd have much less call for concern, Inger thought.

Continued in Part XX...

Christopher Marquet

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