Chapter 4 the Sausage Factory Rumour: Food Contamination Legends And

Chapter 4 The sausage factory rumour: food contamination legends and criticism of the Soviet (economic) system Fingernails in jellied meat: reality or fabrication? According to many informants, hunger and food of suspicious origin were among the reasons for the emergence of the sausage factory rumour/legend. During and after the war people had to put remarkable effort into satisfying their basic needs and ensuring safety. These two areas of life became the subject of everyday conversations, worry and concern after the war. It therefore becomes understandable that these two topics emerged in the most vivid detail from the personal emotional subconscious. People who were in their teens or younger at the time, now, half a century later, remember the finest details of the food their families ate and how the food was procured. Another important emphasis in the interview records is how my informants and their families coped economically during this tough period. The interviews underscored how any means were acceptable in procuring food: one had to be inventive, but deceit and theft were also tolerated. Folklorist Ülo Tedre (born 1928), who was a student at the University of Tartu in the post-war years, remembered the limited variety of food available to students at the time and the constant feeling of hunger. The explanation that he offered for the Tartu sausage factory was: Food shortage and uncontrolled marketplace trading. With the disappearance of food stamps, the legends also disappeared. (136) There is also truth in the opinion that the (comparatively) rich variety of food available at the market aroused suspicion about the origin of the goods sold there. Popular expressions like “man is a wolf to his fellow man” and “for an Estonian the best food is another Estonian”, which urge to use caution and when decoded imply the cruelty and guile of one’s neighbours, began to acquire a more essential, direct, meaning. One could not trust the authorities, one’s neighbours, or any food that was not prepared at home. Sausage factory rumours brought together events from the fantasy world and real life; thus, in the world created by the metalanguage of post-war narrative, people eating each other (although unknowingly) was turning into a ghastly reality. The fairytale of a father eating a stew of his son without knowing it1 was coming “true”. Many informants spoke of their suspicion that they might have accidentally eaten sausage made of human meat: after the war people were 88 Eda Kalmre always distrustful of their food. A woman who was born in the countryside near Tartu described her feelings: You know, I’d have wanted to have sausage. Meat had run out by the autumn, mutton as well, and pork wasn’t available. We could’ve bought some, money was not a problem. But, you see, we didn’t dare; private citizens sold it everywhere but you wouldn’t dare to buy it or know what it was like. I nearly developed a dislike for sausage. You couldn’t tell what it was made of. (139–140) The people of Tartu were probably apprehensive not only because of the fear of suspicious meat products, sausage, meat pies and jellied meat that were sold at the market, but particularly because such trading was becoming part of the market regulation and the buyers were made almost into accomplices to the crime. Cannibalism, which had remained the extreme limit of cultural behaviour and was attributed only to people outside one’s own group, gained a new position in which it may have become associated with friends and family because of their ignorance. This kind of psychological, symbolistic, approach to these legends tends to have a solid grounding. The pie sellers in these tales are mainly evil strangers from whom you should not buy, and in accordance with the semantics of folktales, fingernails or finger bones found in the pie exposed the secret. There was actual evidence to the story. There were always whispers. But this proved that it [the sausage factory] was there. This was nothing surprising. And then they said that someone had bought a sausage and had found a fingernail in it. So it was. And of course it [rumour] began to spread. (116) I went to school in Tartu and was going back to my village, hitchhiking out of town on Peetri hill. On the spot where there was once a news stand, there was a bench and people used to hitchhike there. And transport lorries picked people up, because, you know, there were no cars at the time. And then there was this Russian pie seller. She was carrying a large basket, a really large basket and it was covered with a piece of cloth and she was always shouting: “Goriachie pirochki” [‘hot pies’] and “pirochki, come and buy pirochki”. Of course I would never buy one because my mother had told me that in those days, after the war, you couldn’t buy anything outside the stores. Be patient, come home and then you can eat, and so I didn’t buy any. When I went to school I took with me enough provisions for a week. And then I went home and told them that there’s this pie seller. Mother said, God forbid, don’t buy, God knows what dog’s meat these are made of, don’t you .

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