ARRIVAL - A SHORT STORY

     In a little farming community in Eastern Estonia, a five minute walk from the famed Puhitsa Convent, lived an eighteen year-old girl with her grandparents, Joosep and Kadri Kallade, who took over her care when her parents developed pneumonia and died within hours of each other.   Her name was Lilisi. She was beautiful, devout and simple. Lilisi  tended the family garden and in bad weather she knitted sweaters for the tourist trade. She had long, blonde hair and her skin had a creamy texture. If she had admirers, they were not in evidence. Young men were scarce in that region of Europe.

   

Working in the garden, Lilisi  sometimes disappeared from the scene. Her grandparents were unconcerned. She usually headed for the near-by copse which had a running stream, many birds and rich natural growth. They gathered that she had lain down somewhere and gone to sleep.

   

On one occasion she was gone for an unusually long time and Joosep and Kadri began to worry. Lilisi finally emerged  from the woods looking disheveled and upset. She had obviously been frightened and had been crying. Lilisi told her grandparents a strange tale. She said  she had been abducted by beings who appeared to be human, taken aboard a strange vehicle and  whisked away into the sky and taken to an odd location. She found herself in a room, lying on a bed surrounded by men in white coats. She had been sedated and was unable to speak or struggle. She said the men drew blood,  poked and probed, even in regions she considered private.

   

Joosep and Kadri were skeptical. They told her she had probably fallen asleep in  the forest and had experienced a bad dream. They advised her to speak no more of the experience and to try to forget it.

   

Events took a new turn a  few months later when Lilisi had all the signs of a growing pregnancy. She continued working in the garden plot for a few months until finally Kadri took her into total seclusion. On an April day she delivered Lilisi of twins, a boy and a girl. Hours later she told her, “ We cannot keep them, you know.You must take them to the Convent. They will find good homes for them.”

   

Crestfallen, Lilisi had to agree. The babies were beautiful, but she could see no other alternative. The family was  very poor and had few resources  for their their upbringing. Privately, Joosep told Kadri, “ She was raped in the forest. Who knows what to expect of these two. To the convent.....without delay.”

   

That same evening Lilisi parted with the twins.Weeping quietly, she bundled them into a carrying basket. In silence the twins gazed up at her with green eyes. She walked the short distance to the Convent, stumbling in the dark over the uneven terrain. It was a warm evening. Stars shined bright overhead and a thin sliver of a moon  appeared low in the western sky.

   

She set the basket down at the gate, rang the bell and retreated into the darkness, watching from a short distance as the gate opened and a figure looked down, then looked about, then picked up the basket and disappeared within.