Accused of Murder
(A Frontotemporal Étude)
While hauling the suitcase down from the top shelf of the cupboard, I slipped off the leather chair and fell face first on to the hallway floor. As I fell, there was time enough to think that perhaps I’d die or at least lose some mobility; but while I lay there, alive, I began slowly to move my arm, hurt at the elbow. I felt my knee as well. The bones were intact, it seemed. Carefully I got back on my feet. As usual I had left everything to the last minute; there was exactly an hour and a half until the plane’s departure. True, I had dug everything out and spread what I wanted to take across the armchairs and the sofa, but my suitcase was still not packed. I stuffed the items quickly inside, checked that my passport was there and called a taxi. My hands were trembling; the fall had shaken my mind more than my body. On one occasion I happened to see a pig that had been attacked by a bear. The pig wasn’t badly hurt, but the shock had left it trembling all over. Its owner stroked it, soothed it. I, too, would have liked to complain to someone, to whine a little: look what’s happened to me, my foot slipped on the slick surface of the chair, the suitcase fell from my hand, I crashed to the floor and hurt myself. But there was no one to moan at no one to stroke me. I and what had happened to me mattered to no one at all.
The taxi arrived. I grabbed my suitcase and handbag; my elbow was hurting badly, and my injured knee was throbbing, but the trip couldn’t be postponed. There was nothing else I could do. In the cab I checked all my travel documents – passport, ID card, travel insurance, the printed ticket with a window seat. Wallet, bank cards, make-up bag, keys, it was all there. I put the papers back in my handbag and sank back in my seat, feeling calmer. The city centre slid past; along the street posters displayed the familiar faces, or rather half-faces, of my fellow party members; the elections were approaching. The posters’ advertising firm had thought of a smart way to set one party clearly apart from the rest. The style was harsh: black-and-white photos with a single glaring red accent, so that Krõõt’s big teeth and the whites of Juhan’s eyes gleamed luridly. This halving of the face transformed generally mild-mannered candidates into the vicious and the decisive. This did nothing to please me; neither viciousness nor even, perhaps, decisiveness are the things by which elections are won. But I had kept quiet at the party meeting. In the end it wasn’t any of my business. I had given up, thrown in the towel and was fleeing abroad. On holiday. The main thing was whether my elbow and knee would hold out so I could enjoy myself to the full, eat, drink, walk, swim, dance … once there was supposed to cost nothing, ‘all-inclusive’. It was supposed to be warm and pleasant.
There … yes, but where? Suddenly, I had completely forgotten where exactly I was going. At first I’d wanted to go to Athens, where I had acquaintances. I had sometimes stayed there for longer stretches; it was never dull – something always happened in Athens. The Greeks were perpetually disgruntled and on edge, full of protest, greed and a lust for battle; it gripped you, infected you, set you alight. I had even hummed mockingly and shouted slogans with them on Syntagma Square when Angela Merkel, wearing black trousers and a pea-green jacket, walked towards parliament along a street cleared of people and cars. I understood Angela. In my wardrobe, too, long black trousers held pride of place: they went with everything and anywhere. Yes, but I’d abandoned this Athens idea at the last moment. It might be interesting there, but it was not ‘all-inclusive’, and to get to the beach you had to take a tram quite some distance.
The taxi was already pulling up in front of the airport. I didn’t bother checking my ticket to see where exactly I was headed. Funny how a fall can scramble your wits. As he handed me the suitcase from the boot, the driver wished me a pleasant trip. ‘Which way are you flying?’ he asked. ‘That way,’ I gestured towards Lake Ülemiste. ‘Oh yes,’ the driver said with a smile. ‘Everyone’s going there now – it’s really in.’
What did he mean by that? What’s ‘in’? Had I given him a destination after all? Perhaps it was Turkey? Egypt? But were those ‘in’? Albania? Croatia? Well, I’d find out in a moment. I checked in my suitcase; the young woman at the desk quickly fixed some tag to it and handed me a receipt. No destination was marked on it. ‘Gate number three,’ she said with a smile. ‘Have a pleasant trip!’ At long last, the service staff had learned to smile. Or was she laughing at me? I went to the departures board to check where the plane was headed, based on the gate number, but couldn’t see a number three anywhere. There were two, eight, four, five and several others but no three. ‘Interesting,’ I thought. ‘I’ll just find out when they announce the flight.’
An hour passed. In the meantime, I had drunk a latte, eaten a sprat pie, watched the children bustling about in the playroom and the bright yellow-and-blue fish gliding around the aquarium. I checked emails and browsed the Delfi.ee news portal on my smartphone. Perhaps I really was on my way to Greece, to Delphi, Delphoi, where, in times past, the oracle put everything right. I have even visited that place, at the foot of Parnassus; I liked it. The oracle, the Pythia, had always been an older woman, and thus it was a place where at least in antiquity old women were held in honour. I hadn’t seen a Pythian priestess, of course – that position had long since been made redundant – but I had ended up talking with some local weirdo, an elderly woman who claimed to be the oracle herself. ‘The gift has never gone away,’ she whispered, fervent and convincing. ‘They have come down to us from distant times. The Pythia lives on in every woman; in some less, in others more.’ I raised my eyebrows and nodded. She spoke Greek and I spoke Estonian, this was how we conversed, yet for me it seemed as if we understood each other perfectly. I was mostly silent, admittedly. She wore a long white robe edged with blue meanders, the kind I’d seen on marble statues in the Athens museum of antiquities; her grey, uncombed hair coiled over her shoulders like old, faded snakes; on the brown irises of her eyes floated small greyish-white flecks like sun-driven wisps of mist, although she said her sight was good, that the grey flecks were translucent and didn’t hinder her vision; but if something displeased her so that she didn’t want to look, she could gather those flecks over her pupils and then truly see the world through a haze. ‘It is quite special, the other world. Young people don’t see it, only we elderly do.’
That came back to me when, after a long spell at the computer translating a thick, dull novel, my vision gave out and the natural lenses in my eyes had to be replaced with artificial ones. My sight recovered perfectly, but no doubt I lost the chance to see the world the way that old woman did. In Athens I spoke with my friends about her. ‘Ah, that’s old Parthenia of Delphi, a harmless crank, an oddball, but otherwise nice and inoffensive. A virgin.’ – ‘A virgin?’ – ‘Parthenia means maiden. Or girl.’ – ‘It’s hard to think of her as a maiden. She talked to me about sight, the difference between old and young eyes. That the old see what they want to see. If they want to.’ – ‘How do you know what Parthenia said? As far as I know she doesn’t speak a word of anything but Greek, and you don’t speak Greek, do you?’ – ‘No I don’t. And I don’t understand it either. But I understood everything Parthenia said.’ – ‘You heard what you wanted to hear. It’s the same as her vision. I’m sure she was simply complaining that a cataract was forming.’ There was no point arguing with stubborn Serafina, an Italian woman who had by then become Greek. Perhaps it was indeed as Serafina thought. I had understood the old woman in the way that best suited me.
Gate 3 still hadn’t been announced. Behind one counter stood a very young airport official, staring intently at the counter in front of her. I stopped beside her to wait. She didn’t lift her eyes; she was staring, as far as I could tell, neither at the computer nor papers but the reddish ring left by a wineglass. This the girl gazed at blankly. I cleared my throat. She didn’t look up. ‘Excuse me,’ I began hesitantly, then more firmly. ‘I was told my flight leaves from Gate 3, but no flight has left from it. The Gate 3 flight hasn’t been announced and there are no people. In fact, I haven’t found that gate at all.’ – ‘What seems to be the problem?’ the girl asked, exasperated. I repeated my question. ‘Gate 3 is temporarily closed. What time is your flight? Where are you flying to?’ I shrugged. ‘Please show me your boarding pass.’ I handed it over and peered at it myself. The card, on which I believed something was written, appeared in her hands to be simply a blank slip of paper. She turned it over, at a loss. ‘Please show me your boarding pass,’ the girl said again. ‘You must have got something mixed up. This is blank.’ She handed me back my boarding pass; to me there still seemed to be something written on it, although I couldn’t make out what. But when the girl held it up to her eyes it really was blank! I took the paper, and at once some letters, signs and the clear number 3 appeared. ‘But it does say Gate 3 here,’ I tapped the paper which ought to have been my boarding pass. The girl took it back patiently. I looked; it was blank again. I began rummaging nervously in my handbag, pulled out my passport, travel insurance, ID card, notebook. Nothing else. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I must have lost it. Strange. I thought what I handed you was the right card; I clearly saw the number 3.’ The girl looked at me with a glare I was being forced to grow used to. Poor foolish old woman, it seemed to say. She should stay at home with the other old folks. But the official smiled and comforted me. ‘No bother.’ Oh, how I hate that expression. ‘No bother!’ My first words, so my mother, father and aunts said, had not been ‘mummy’ or ‘thank you’, but ‘why bother!’ There was something crude about the expression, even coarse. I was ashamed of it; but now, with my mother, father and aunts all dead, happily no one knew but me. But even I no longer knew why I bothered. ‘No bother’ the girl repeated. ‘We’ll check in momentarily.’ Her fingers rattled on the keyboard. ‘What is your name?’ I wanted to say my name, it was so simple, the simplest thing. I remember when my mother was taken to hospital with a suspected stroke; every now and then a doctor would ask a woman lying in the next bed for her name, age, address, children’s names and other easy things. She couldn’t answer any of them except for her name. That she knew. ‘Milvi Noor,’ she would repeat tirelessly to everything. ‘My name is Milvi Noor.’ Her name was Agnes Peterson.
‘Name?’ I smiled in doubt. ‘Elementary, really.’ – ‘Indeed.’ The girl seemed a little unsure, too. ‘We can locate your boarding pass through your name.’ She looked at me expectantly. ‘Parthenia,’ I said, perfectly aware that this wasn’t my real name, and immediately broke out in a sweat from that knowledge. I knew; but I couldn’t help it. I was as helpless as a corpse. ‘Parthenia? Is that the surname?’ – ‘A given name – it means “maiden”.’ – ‘How interesting,’ said the girl, without a trace of interest. ‘How is it spelled?’ – ‘With a “th”?’ – ‘And the surname?’ – ‘Pegreen,’ I said without hesitation, although I knew that this certainly wasn’t my name. ‘Pegreen?’ – ‘Yes – it means “ornament”.’ – ‘Ornament?’ – ‘Something you adorn yourself with.’ I had no idea whether ‘Pegreen’ meant anything at all, still less where I had got such a name from. ‘In what language?’ asked the girl. ‘Greek.’ – ‘I can’t find your name here. Surely it can’t be written in Greek letters?’ – ‘Surely not.’ – ‘Please show me your passport or ID card; perhaps I’ve misunderstood something.’
I handed over my passport. I had got it only last year, shortly before the old one expired, but it was in order. With a practised movement the girl opened the passport at the right page, the one with the photo, the name and other essential data. The photo was there in its place, but there was nothing else. ‘There’s been some mistake; this isn’t a valid passport.’ – ‘It’s all I have.’ – ‘Then please show me your ID card.’ I gave it to her, scrutinizing the piece of plastic. Present and correct. Photo, name, personal ID number … The girl took the card, glanced at it and said, ‘There’s only a photo here. No other data.’ She showed me the card. I shrugged. I felt an immense despair, a powerlessness. Next I would lose the ability to write, my capacity for speech; I wouldn’t remember anything, wouldn’t recognize anyone, wouldn’t be able to move. From my head all thoughts were voided; I felt them, as it were, streaming in panic up and down the spinal cord, while my head was empty. The only signal reaching my brain was the pain in my elbow.
‘How did you get in here with blank papers like that?’ the girl wondered. ‘Don’t you have any baggage?’ Baggage? I strained to understand what she meant. What is this ‘baggage’? Odd associations came to mind: cabbage, cribbage, rubbish. ‘Did you have a suitcase? Did you give it away?’ Give it away. ‘Yes,’ I said suddenly, understanding the issue, ‘I did give it away.’ Once there had lived a man in the neighbouring building about whom people whispered that he would listen to people talking, would let them tell him jokes and then would go and report his fellow citizens. An informer. ‘So, you gave the suitcase away?’ With the suitcase and the act of giving it away strange associations came flooding into my mind, but it would have been absurd to start laying them out for the girl. I realized it was better to keep quiet. I looked at her for a long time. She looked down. ‘I think it’s best if we discuss your case elsewhere.’ – ‘What is there to discuss? In the meantime my plane will leave without me.’ – ‘Madam, we don’t even know which plane you were supposed to be on. That’s what we must establish first. Please come with me.’ We went through the airport’s pleasant, comfortably furnished halls; at one point there was a wall covered with white fabric; then along a long narrow corridor, at the end of which was an ordinary, unmarked door that opened with a code. ‘Sit here and wait,’ the girl said. ‘For what?’ – ‘Until someone comes to talk with you.’ She turned around and headed quickly for the door.
‘Wait!’ I cried in despair. ‘I’m going to miss my plane.’ ‘We’re all going to miss ours,’ came a voice from the corner. I looked round. The speaker was a man on the youngish side. Other people were sitting on the benches. The airport attendant had already gone out and closed the door behind her. I went over to the door to follow her. I tried pulling, pushing, but the door was locked. ‘Give up’ said the man. ‘They bring people in here, but no one gets out. No one’s been invited in for a chat either.’ Beside the man sat a woman who was crying, now and then blowing her nose with a snuffle. In another corner hunched an old crone, a bum, judging by her clothes and the smell. There was also a skinny girl with a brazen look, and the inevitable waiting-room figure – a cocky young man tapping on his smartphone.
‘What sort of place is this?’ I asked the man beside the weeping woman. In truth, the snivelling was getting on my nerves. ‘Who knows? Some kind of holding room, I suppose.’ – ‘Why are we being held here?’ – ‘I don’t know what you’re being held for, but those two were having sex in the loo,’ the smartphone-tapper cut in. ‘What do you mean?’ – ‘What do I mean? They were caught in the act in the ladies’. A mum went in there with her child, heard suspicious noises and called the police. Stupid of them to go into the women’s loo. They should’ve gone to the gents’. The men wouldn’t have been bothered. They’d have formed a queue.’
At that the weeping woman snorted even louder into her tissue. ‘What on earth are you talking about? How could you know that?’ I asked the young man. ‘He’s right,’ the woman whimpered softly. ‘Oh, how awful, how shameful! He was right there at the door when the police arrested us.’ – ‘Good heavens!’ I couldn’t help but express my amazement. ‘Couldn’t you have waited until the plane reached your destination and you were in the hotel?’ – ‘Ah, that’s a longer story.’ The man next to the weeping woman waved his hand. ‘There was no other option. We’re not even flying to the same destination.’ – ‘Even so, the ladies’ loo is a public place.’ – ‘Hell, a city street is a public place, too, and look, there one dog mounts another, hops up on top, by force and fury, all fire and passion.’ – ‘Come now, those are dogs, creatures without reason.’ – ‘Sex doesn’t need reason,’ the smartphone youth muttered. ‘And why are you here?’ I asked him. ‘Did you notice the wall draped with white cloth when they marched you in here? That was because of me.’ – ‘You hung the cloth on the wall and now you’re sitting here for that?’ – ‘Hell no. Doesn’t this anodyne, tarted-up airport irritate you?’ the lad asked in return. ‘No, why should it? I think it’s one of the most pleasant airports anywhere.’ – ‘Sterile horror. A small, poor nation showing off. I wanted to improve things a little. I sprayed two big words on the wall that, for some reason, are considered obscene: cun –’
‘That’s enough. There’s a child here,’ I cut him off, indicating the girl. ‘That’s no child,’ the young man snapped. ‘She’s a little thief.’ – ‘Even so.’ – ‘Well then, what’s so bad about those words? You might as well turn up your nose at butter and bread. This isn’t about obscenity. I’d be sitting here even if I’d painted a pipe and a waterlily on the wall.’ He brayed with laughter at his own joke. Then he stared at me and, raising a portentous finger, said, ‘All right. I won’t swear, but the clever will catch on anyway. Here’s a riddle for you. What is it: white, eh-heh, goes into red, eh?’ – ‘A raspberry.’ The young man was taken aback and disappointed. ‘How did you know?’ – ‘From the Literary Museum.’ – ‘The Literary Museum? Do they have that sort of thing on the walls there?’ – ‘No. I found it back in the day in the folklore department.’ – ‘I should go. Where’s that then?’ he asked, interested. ‘In Tartu.’ – ‘What a pity!’ The lad’s zeal visibly ebbed. ‘Bloody Tartu is a dump.’ – ‘A dump?’ – ‘Of course.’ – ‘And why was that old granny brought here?’ The thief-girl cut into our conversation, ‘Because she stinks. Like all old crones.’ The girl gave me a meaningful look. ‘She was rummaging in the airport bins. In our country … What must people think of us, if the first thing foreigners arriving by plane see is a stinking hag at the rubbish, bulging carrier bags by her side,’ explained the man who had been busy in the ladies’ loo.
At the mention of carrier bags the old crone began to wail. ‘They took everything from me. I was robbed.’ – ‘Shut up and stop stinking,’ snapped the thief-girl, who had been caught stealing a deodorant from the R-Kiosk in the airport. ‘I can’t stand the stench.’
For a moment the ‘cellmates’ livened up, then fell silent again. Only the sobs of the woman caught in the act of screwing, and the soft clicking of the phone-tapper’s buttons, broke the silence. My elbow was throbbing painfully. I rolled up my sleeve. The arm was blue, the skin grazed raw at the elbow. The young man looked at it. ‘A fight?’ – ‘No, I fell.’ – ‘Alcohol?’ – ‘No, I don’t drink. Not any more.’ – ‘Then what did they bring you in for?’ – ‘I couldn’t remember my name. They couldn’t find me anywhere.’ – ‘What d’you mean? You’re right here. Found.’ – ‘They couldn’t find my name on the computer. It was as if I didn’t exist at all.’ – ‘But surely you’ve got your papers with you. An ID card, or even a passport.’ – ‘Of course, how else could I have got in?’ – ‘Well then, look at your passport.’ – ‘I did, but I couldn’t see.’ – ‘Come on, show me, I’ll have a look. Don’t be scared. Go on, show me.’
I handed him the passport and boarding pass. ‘See, your name’s right here,’ he said. ‘And your plane’s already taken off. Never mind, you can get on a flight tomorrow. Unless they keep you longer.’ – ‘Where did my plane go?’ – ‘It left, obviously. You missed it.’ – ‘What plane?’ – ‘Your plane.’ – ‘Yes, but where did it fly to?’ – ‘What d’you mean? Don’t you know where you were going?’ – ‘No.’ – ‘Well, you must know …’ – ‘No, I don’t …’
He gave me back the passport and boarding pass, but before I could study the card the door opened and a policeman appeared, motioning to me. ‘Come with me.’ The others looked at me with a mix of curiosity and pity, like cellmates watching one of their own taken off for interrogation or execution.
I was shown into a room with a sign on the door: Police. Behind the desk sat what was evidently the superior officer, an older man who gestured for me to sit down opposite him. My elbow was hurting more and more. Before the officer could say anything I began, ‘I fell this morning, at home. Off a chair. Full length. Straight on to my side. My elbow hurts terribly. It should be shown to a doctor.’ – ‘You fell? Under what circumstances?’ – ‘Because of a suitcase.’ – ‘Because of a suitcase?’ The officer grew alert. – ‘Yes. I was trying to get my suitcase down from the top shelf in the hallway cupboard, my foot slipped – the left one, it’s given me trouble before – and then I fell.’ – ‘Was it only the elbow that was hurt? Perhaps you lost consciousness for a moment – try to recall.’ – ‘I didn’t.’ – ‘Are you sure?’ – ‘Absolutely.’ – ‘But you gave a false name to airport staff and presented false documents.’ – ‘I said the name wrong by accident – I don’t even know why. But my documents were all genuine.’ – ‘Let’s see your passport and ID card, and your boarding pass, too, please.’
I placed them all on the desk, adding, for good measure, my insurance card. The officer leafed through them, slowly and carefully. ‘Everything seems in order. Except your plane has already departed.’ – ‘Where?’ – ‘Away from here, naturally.’
I didn’t dare ask further. If the plane had gone, it had gone; what did it matter where? ‘So my ticket’s gone, too, down the drain, the whole trip ruined. Could I at least leave on tomorrow’s flight?’ – ‘The next flight to the same destination isn’t scheduled until a week from now. Do you have travel-disruption insurance?’ – ‘No, I didn’t disrupt my travel.’ – ‘Depends on how you look at it.’ – ‘What happens now?’ – ‘We have a few questions for you. A charge has been filed against you.’ – ‘What nonsense is this? I was going on holiday, all-inclusive, swimming, sunbathing, a few excursions. Everything was fully paid for. What am I guilty of? I’m an honest person. Took a last-minute deal, cheap; didn’t cost as much as a month’s pension.’ – ‘Here is the charge, read it yourself.’ – ‘No. You’re the ones accusing me, so you can read it.’ – ‘We’re not accusing you; we’re verifying the accusation made against you.’ – ‘Whatever. What am I accused of then?’ – ‘Murder.’
‘You know, this whole thing has been absurd from the start. I came here, they scrambled my memory, I no longer know where I was supposed to fly to. Then they told me to go to “Gate 3”, which apparently doesn’t exist in this airport, and finally your airport clerk waved blank papers and empty passports in front of my face to confuse me and shoved me into some ghastly security room full of lewd kids, swearers, thieves and stinking old women. And now you’re accusing me of murder. I’ll file a complaint against you!’ – ‘You may.’ – ‘I want a lawyer,’ I played my crime-film trump card. – ‘Have you got one?’ – ‘How about you?’ – ‘I don’t need one.’ – ‘Oh yes you do, I intend to accuse you!’ – ‘Let’s deal with the accusation against you first.’ – ‘You said murder.’ – ‘Double murder. Look.’
He tapped at his computer for a while. Oh how I hate the clatter of keyboard keys. I always mute the sound when someone’s typing in a film, especially in those German crime shows. The officer turned the screen towards me. I looked. It was some nature article from a paper called Double Moon. – ‘And where’s the murder?’ – ‘Read the comments.’ I read: What’s that old hag going on about [that old hag – that was me]; everyone knows and can testify that she drank Vaino and Mati to death among the junipers in Saaremaa.
‘There you are then!’ – ‘Vaino and Mati?[1] Who the hell are they?’ – ‘The names have been changed,’ the officer whispered. – ‘Are the Estonian police really wasting time on such idiocy? You should find out who wrote that comment and charge them with libel.’ – ‘We did. It’s not libel. The man has witnesses against you. We’ll have to detain you. Forty-eight hours for starters.’ – ‘What on earth is going on? You’re all mad! I won’t let this go! Mati’s never even been to Saaremaa!’ I blurted out without thinking. – ‘But Vaino has. And both are dead. You can’t deny that.’ – ‘I can neither confirm nor deny this. I don’t even know who you’re talking about.’ – ‘Oh, you know. And whether Mati was in Saaremaa or not – that’s under investigation.’ – ‘By whom exactly?’ – ‘Investigators.’
I no longer understood anything. Perhaps I had fallen on my head. ‘Get me a doctor. My elbow may be broken. Look!’ I bared my elbow and thrust it under the officer’s nose. ‘Get that arm out of my sight!’ he barked, but bent closer to look nonetheless, then burst out laughing. ‘It’s make-up! Wait, I’ll wipe it off.’ He took a packet of wet wipes from the drawer – heaven knows why he had such a thing there at all – and began scrubbing at my elbow. It hurt terribly; blood oozed from the abraded skin, and he showed me the reddened wipe triumphantly. ‘See? Make-up! Comes right off! So stop your nonsense!’ – ‘I demand a lawyer and a doctor!’ – ‘And I demand that evil be punished! I demand respect for the laws of the Republic of Estonia! For the Constitution!’ shouted the officer with sudden bombast. – ‘Long live the Republic of Estonia!’ I contributed, loading my voice with as much irony as I could muster.
The uniformed man gave me a reproachful look and pressed some button, whereupon a rank-and-file policeman soon entered. The superior winked familiarly at his subordinate. ‘Take the citizen to pre-trial detention.’ – ‘No, this is getting completely ridiculous; like an old Estonian story my mother once told me. Want to hear it?’ – ‘I think we’ve heard enough today.’ – ‘It might be instructive.’ I looked at one officer then the other and began the story, the point of which I had never grasped and had always thought of as some naive old-time nonsense. ‘One fine Sunday morning I was sitting indoors peeling potatoes. There was a knock. The police came in and said, “Come with us”, so I went. At the station they said, “Tell us what happened.” I said, “One fine Sunday morning I was sitting indoors peeling potatoes. There was a knock. The police came in and said …” etc.’ – ‘Nonsense!’ cried the officer. ‘No one peels potatoes indoors! And on a fine Sunday morning at that! You’ve tripped yourself up!’
Indeed, he was right; I had thought the story foolish, even as a child. I nodded to the officer and went with the policeman out to the street, where a police car was waiting. They didn’t handcuff me. The policeman took the wheel. I had no idea where Tallinn’s pre-trial detention facility was, but the drive went along the familiar Tartu Road, and near the bus station the car turned onto Juhkentali Street. This had a calming effect. After a while the car parked in front of my own building. ‘Right,’ said the policeman, ‘the case is closed for now. Out you get, and next time don’t heave suitcases about if your legs won’t hold you.’ – ‘But the murder charge? The pre-trial detention?’ I felt almost a pang of regret that the adventure was ending. ‘No idea. My orders were to bring you home, so I did. Goodbye!’ And he even saluted!
I went inside, sat down before the mirror and looked at myself for a long time. I won’t complain about what I saw there. What good would that do? In fact, I’d got off lightly enough; back in the day we’d done plenty of hard drinking among those junipers.
[1] Editor’s note: A possible reference to Vaino Vahing (1940–2008) and Mati Unt (1944–2005), who moved in the same literary circles as Maimu Berg in Estonia in the 1970s. By the time this text was first published in 2015, both men had been dead for several years. The title Frontotemporal Étude may also be read as an oblique reference to Vahing’s Étude, published in English translation in the spring 2025 issue of EstLit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Now 80, Maimu Berg is an Estonian writer and critic who has spent more than half her life as an author. She began her career as a literary critic in the 1980s and later continued as a writer, with her first book being published in 1988. Since then she has published several works, including novellas, plays, short stories and a poetry collection as well as a selection of her columns that appeared in the Estonian press in the 1990s. During that same decade she also wrote for Finnish and German newspapers.
Berg studied at Tallinn Secondary School No. 20 (now Tallinna Ühisgümnaasium). She graduated from the University of Tartu in 1968 with a degree in Estonian philology and in 1986 with a degree in journalism. As a journalist she spent time at the fashion magazine Siluett and the journal Keel ja Kirjandus. She also launched Elukiri, the first magazine in Estonia aimed at older readers, which has since ceased publication. As well as in journalism, she has also worked at the University of Tartu Library and for twenty years at the Finnish Institute in Tallinn. She has translated Finnish literature into Estonian, including poetry, prose and plays.