Why couldn't she have someone! Was she destined to remain this poor, lonely and anguished still and all?

Eight years! In that time her own son could already write words and slink away from choral singing. But he wouldn't, Inger would bring him up so that he wouldn't slink away from anything, would face everything.

She Fumbled in her handbag for the sandwich, unwrapped it, crumpled the wrapping into a ball and threw it into the water. She gave half of the sandwich to Arne. The man fell to it with great gusto.

In the name of justice. But where is justice in love?

Defiance raised its head in Inger. Why must it be namely she who has to withdraw, to prepare herself for giving up? Was it she who had broken something up? Could she have broken anything up, made a hash of anything, if it hadn't had a flaw in it from the start? Why didn't that woman, who she didn't even know, whose very name she didn't want to know, why didn't she do anything to keep her husband by her? Or was she simple-minded enough to believe that her marriage lines would be an eternal safeguard, that life could go on along a never-ending trodden path, and love would live on and on its own like some miraculous flame. Like a miraculous flame which doesn't need feeding or poking. Maybe that woman had never loved and didn't know the first thing about it? Existed in her stable, tepid complacency and didn't have an inkling that something had gone wrong long ago. Had never experienced exaltation, that brightness which glows through the trivia of everyday things and gives a reason for existence?

If so, she's a victim of her own greyness and undeveloped emotions and has only herself to blame.

Why must I give up? Why must Arne forsake me?

And the boys? With what are they going to pay Arne for chucking me up? In ten or twelve years they'll leave their home and will lead their own life. Will they say thanks to their father for sacrificing his love for them whose life is still ahead? And what kind of father or mother could permit or demand it? For knowing about the sacrifice would be round the young people's neck like an albatross, would burden them with a guilt not theirs and which they can never atone for.

In the name of justice this marriage ought to be divorced. Yes, but ...

Inger, your train of thought is logical, but too rational and on these grounds unsuitable.

And how can you know, why are you so sure you'll be able to give more in return than you take away? Won't Arne have his emotional wires crossed, won't he be like Balaam's ass or, even worse, like a turtle suffering from an overdose of radioactive radiation who has lost its capability to find its way about and makes for desert instead of water? Who's to say if a person, torn out of their habitual environment wouldn't be actually engrossed in such feelings? Will they be able to adapt themselves to the new one? Inger gave a start, this thought was new for her and hostile.

"Can't you get up courage to go home?"

It was long past midnight, a clamming spring wind was rattling her windowpane.

"Where else could I go?"

"Why so serious? Something on your mind?"

"I am that, always. At home I'm even more serious."

"I don't know what you're like at home. I'll never know."

"You won't ... What the heck, you might, you know."

Inger didn't know what thoughts were going through his head, the man was bottled up and hardly ever spoke about his home-life. She could only imagine their relationship, voice, tone, gestures, only have an inkling, only guess and try to fit together some haphazard fragments into a shadowy picture.

She was just about to ask how his wife was feeling, when out of the blue Arne asked with some inner strain,

"Will you let me move in with you if my wife turns me out?"

It came too soon. Inger wasn't ready for a question like that. She had never thought that because of her his wife might simply turn Arne out of his house. Suddenly she didn't know herself what she had imagined. She was silent.

"If you don't, I'll snuff it."

"No, my love, this mustn't come to pass. I'll give you all my strength and you'll bear up. Your role is trying, but you can't do without your boys. You won't forget, you won't go out of their life, you must never forget them. You can't go out of their life." Inger went silent, trying to find the words. "And neither can I. Believe me, it would ruin our life. We will hold out. One thanks to the other."

"Will you answer me a question?"

"Yes."

"Do you love me?"

"Yes, I do. And that's why it's so hard."

"I've pondered over our future. I've thought I'll divorce my wife and be with you. But what if in a year or two Inger doesn't love me any more, if ... ?"

"You still aren't sure about me?" For God's sake, am I myself? I didn't answer him ... !

"I am now, but where do we go from here?"

That's right, where do we go from here? ... There's only one thing I'm sure about: never before have I loved anyone the way I love you. I can't imagine anyone else in your place.

Overcome by tenderness, the man folded half-naked Inger tightly in his arms, burying his face in her breast.

My darling, my love! But what if, indeed, in a couple of years? ... That was a thing nobody could foretell. The hours of passion and desire were stolen, taken secretly. They didn't know each other in an everyday situation, in normal life, only in each other's arms, passion-drugged, when the world is seen in bright, scalding light. But how compatible would they be other ways?

They both tried to fight off such thoughts, to push them aside.

Did Arne need her, Inger, as a whole? This fear that Inger wouldn't love him any more in a year or two? What for? What is he afraid of?

Inger herself didn't think of her knowledge and scope as being something special. Nothing to make a song about. But what if Arne did? What if it'd give him a complex to last till the end of his days, if he looked up to her, if he felt he was weaker and not clever enough? What then? All these concepts Inger makes use of, all this education she'd sometimes gladly chuck away as superfluous and interfering–nevertheless, one can't tear it out, as if it never existed. Then again she wouldn't be an integral person, she'd be broken, not herself. She had noticed that odd and timid look Arne had sometimes given to her books and magazines. And hadn't she herself avoided some topics lest they should embarrass Arne?

She'd have liked to shout: no, no, my love, you are good enough for me just the way you are. But she had no leave, no right to do so, she had to see more, to brave more.

Oh, heavens! Excessive caution makes happiness impossible. All this looking ahead, back and aside, these fears and complexes.

Yet, but ... Forever this but, every day, every hour. Like a hook.

Weekday is what we want. We could try it out, we should try it out.

How can she put it across to Arne?–Let's play house for a month or so and see how it'll work out. If it's a flop, you can always go back.

Or better still, to say so to Arne's wife?

Inger felt a sharp prickle in her heart. To his wife!?

Every rustic made Inger jump, she kept her ears open to every passing car, to every footstep in the street, to every sound. When the sound of some car became louder, her heart soared with joy.

Comes, doesn't come? It would be better if she knew for sure he wouldn't come, she would try to find something to do, think of something else, but to wait this way was anguish, it was killing.

Her hearing became extremely sharp. She was like a wound-up watch-spring. Crying alone worked like a sleeping-draught, tired her out and made her fall fathoms deep in sleep.

In the morning she was calm. She had always felt she had more common sense than Arne, that it was the man who was crazy about her. But already in the afternoon this woman-like self-assurance would always become tottery and by the evening would vanish completely.

An empty room and three bare aspens beneath the window.

Suddenly she became serious about the possibility that the man could ditch his wife because of her. Some beautiful bracing hope seeped into her and her mood took a turn of 180 degrees. They will live together, she'll help Arne in everything with heart and hand, they'll be happy. Are they then really so different that there was no chance they'd find some common ground, shake down together? If Inger met him more than halfway often enough, if she taught him slowly, almost unperceptibly? By rights, if they taught each other. Inger was attracted by the man's strength, the refreshing unpretentiousness radiating from him. He knew how to do simple things. And sometimes she felt that the man knew something mysterious and primordial that made him strong like a tree and added to finger's sense of security, too.

Always the same: the three aspens and the tin roof of the schoolhouse. Washing strung across a line in the yard. A grey sky and a leaden tiredness in her bones. The best she could do was to sleep.

She was fed up with everything, she was tired of her pupils who did not bother to pore over the books any more, of the wearisome spring weather and of her own thoughts.

Of love, too? she asked with a start. No, not at all of that, but of the vicious circle she was in.

She whisked through the flatlet in a quick clean and tidy campaign and washed her dishes. Finally she even scrubbed the staircase. If he comes, it will be nicer to mount scrubbed stairs.

Then she went to Riina's. Riina made coffee and said that in Tallinn her husband had acquired a very sweet-smiling, colleague. Whether there was more in it she wasn't in the position to know and, to tell the truth, wasn't interested to learn. For there was a big difference between an easy lady and a man playing around, for a man things of this kind were simply a fling. For a male his home and creature comforts were of such moment that he didn't bother to start building another nest.

"Men are all alike, the only thing they need is a fling," repeated Riina sipping her coffee, her legs crossed, and Inger didn't begin to argue with her. How could she be sure that one man was something else again? Maybe from Arne's point of view she, too, was only a fling, a pastime, a diversion to be visited whenever he had time to spare and an urge to? Already for a week she has been neglected, given to longing and despairing listening to every rustle.

No, it is not so, she feels it isn't. One mustn't take heed of Riina, she's always been prone to simplify things to clothe them in strange vulgar words without any pith.

But what if it actually is like that?

Away, away, somewhere far off, where she'll be free from it all, all alone, where no one knows her. Tomorrow's the day she'll fling her resignation on Soova's desk and that's the end.

But she can't do it, she's to wait till spring, to stay with her class till the end. Even being crossed in love doesn't give her the right to escape, she must stay right here, driving the dunces to wisdom with a cat-o'-nine-tails if need be. Why must it be she who's saddled with such a thankless role in the world? On top of that she must bear the brunt of her colleagues' observations to wit the things she's talking about to her pupils were too highbrow as was stated at the recent discussion of her form teacher's educational period. A teacher of English speaking about time and space, about mysterious spots in space one isn't able to learn anything about, to gain the tiniest bit of information from?! Putting on airs, that's what it's boiling down to.

It was only yesterday that Juta had told Inger that somewhere at a party she had snapped at a teacher because of her, had even had a squabble. "She was backbiting you, that's why!" Inger had been shocked but Juta had proceeded, "You wait and see! Now you all are practically idolizing Teacher Uunvald, but she, too, will change!"

Idolizing? Would they if they ... ? No, Inger had never tried to feign a standard of perfection. She might be able to explain to them even that, if need be ... Maybe they would be able to understand her–sometime?

But as to the truth of it. How long will she be able to be on her toes, when that close vicious circle keeps taking and gives back only weariness, disappointment bitterness. Away from here, quickly!

The profession consumes her time, meetings where everybody's ceaselessly gabbing about self-improvement are sucking her dry, no time left for reading and improving one's mind. Whence will come then her intellectual level, how will she be able to cope with the perpetual obligation to develop? At the very best she will be able to keep abreast of her subject and its teaching methods, but that's the be-all and end-all of it. Everything else, the things that should improve, deepen and polish her personality, lies beyond her reach and in the end she'll be bogged down and sink far below the intellectual level she had started with after her graduation: she'll congeal, become wooden and if some seventh-or eighth-former happens to ask her about something outside the scope of the curriculum, she'll reply in a harassed, irritated voice, it's not for a pupil to ask questions.

And whence will come the emotional charge that would give strength? How will she have strength to fight the inescapably numbing flow of life when there's no prop and stay anywhere at hand? Love that heightens and brightens everything and everyone ... To give up love? But are her relations with Arne really perfect? There's warmth and passion, that's a fact, but she must still dish out a part of herself elsewhere, again only to the books she reads. But she's dying to give all in one, to abandon herself, totally–her body, soul, thoughts, her entire essence.

Inger was dismayed at her thoughts. It turns out she isn't quite happy about Arne? But this was the very thing she didn't want to admit.

No, the long and the short of it is that the whole thing is nothing but a bluestocking's sophistry; an offended female's throwaway lines and self-justification. Forever those sour grapes. She hasn't seen hide or hair of Arne for several days now, that's the main reason. She has been waiting on and on and her waiting has turned into a palpable thing, it's a part of everything: of her lunch, of her books and exercise books, of her chairs, coffee-pot, table and bed. Yes, of her bed, my God, of her bed!

How come Arne doesn't know what waiting signifies, why does he make her suffer so? If he can't come, hasn't any time, he could at least stop by and say he's busy, has long drives ahead, must thin out and transplant tomato seedlings in his hothouse at home.

But cars are ceaselessly driving past, cars and trucks, swishing, rattling, rumbling, shaking her house, day and night.

But what if something has happened, his wife has been taken to the hospital, Arne is alone with his children, his animals, his hothouse and his pangs of conscience? ... Or if something's happened to him? ... No, no, it can't be, mustn't be that–some accident, a car-crash. Arne's in hospital, Inger knows nothing, can't go visiting, under no circumstances is allowed to help, to take care of him. For she is his underground love who mustn't exist, who doesn't exist. Only by accident, by some strange coincidence would she have a chance to learn ... No, it can't be, Arne was a decent driver, careful, competent, his reactions quick, nothing could happen to him. If not some illness–quinsy a chill, mumps, pneumonia ...

Once Inger's heart had begun aching, it kept aching away, no argument or soothing could help it.

Continued in Part XXVIII...