When the Doves Disappeared: A Novel

by Sofi Oksanen

  The entries began in 1945 and the last pages were written in 1950 and ’51. It was those last pages that were shocking—not their contents, but the dates themselves. The final entries were made seven years after Soviet control began and the borders were closed. It proved that Roland had still been alive two years after the March deportations, when the bandits’ supporters were removed from the country, their lackeys pulled up like weeds until there was no farm left that supported the Forest Brothers, everything collectivized, the insurgency wiped out.

  Contrary to what Parts had assumed, Roland hadn’t been shot in the back at Klooga, hadn’t ended up in an unmarked grave in the cellar of a house burned down by the Germans, hadn’t been imprisoned or died of his wounds in the woods. He hadn’t escaped the country, hadn’t been evacuated. If he had survived in Estonia until 1951 as a free man, then no one else had killed him, either. He was still here.

  Parts decided not to panic. He would figure this out, teach himself to know Roland like he knew himself. He would think like Roland. That was the only way he could find his trail. The faster he could understand the writers of illegal journals, the faster he would find the men who’d gone underground, and this man in particular. Because even if a person succeeded in obtaining a new identity, a new name, in building a new history for himself, something from his old life would always turn up. If anyone knew that, Parts did.

  The profile formed by the diary didn’t quite correspond to the person Parts had known. That man had run into battle unafraid, defiant. The writer of the diary was a much more wary man. Nevertheless, the entries in the notebook were written as if there would be a reader for them in the future. That was what Parts didn’t understand. Roland had lived in the valley of death, he had no hope of a return to a normal life, no possibility of survival, so where did he get this wellspring of faith that one day his voice would be heard? Of course, Roland wasn’t alone in this. Parts could well remember the fervent obsession of those life stories shoved into bottles in Siberia. Memoirs. “These words are a record of the crimes of the Bolsheviks for generations to come.” Sometimes just scraps of paper, many of them buried secretly along with their authors, in unmarked graves. Some of the bottles probably rested in some archive behind seals—just like the diary Parts had cleverly planted for himself, examined only by those with security clearance—and some of them would never be found, never be read. Parts also remembered a colleague who had been brought to Katyn, in Poland, as a child. Softened by liquor, the man had whispered that of course they had understood what was happening to the Poles, and that the Estonians were next. “You should have seen the look on my mother’s face.” All the Poles had been given vaccinations and then put on a bus, and no one had resisted—they wouldn’t give dried provisions to those about to die, would they? They wouldn’t vaccinate them? “We Estonians understood all right. The train car we were put in read ‘Capacity: Eight Horses.’ ” But why had the Poles covered the walls of the monastery, converted into a prison, with their names and ranks, when the next person to occupy the cell would just cover them with his own? Was it some instinctive writing mania, a need to leave some kind of mark on the world? Did Roland have the same mania, a deluded notion that the truth always comes out in the end? Yes, Roland did.

  Perhaps Roland was like the old Russian who had told Parts about mustard gas tests he’d performed in a special office in Moscow. The man had desperately scratched the chemical formula on a corner of the bunk he and Parts shared at the camp way station, and said that the head of the special office had been particularly interested in the gas’s effect on human skin. Curare darts. Ricin. It was clear that the most accurate results would come from human subjects. “I tested on one German soldier four times. It wasn’t until the fifth try that they found the fatal dose.” Parts hadn’t been able to impress the formula into his mind, although he’d understood immediately that the old man’s recipes could be excellent barter later on. There were numerous countries that would have been eager to get them, but at the time, business with foreign countries had seemed like a far-off fantasy. It was wiser to leave the Technological Directorate’s labs alone—the old man had said he was the only one of the staff there left alive. Maybe that was why he had such a need to pass the information on. Had that been Roland’s motivation for keeping the diary—to secure the information before his days ended?

  Parts pronounced Roland’s name. He was beginning to get used to it. He was going to have to. In the years to come the name would make its way through his mind innumerable times; he would have to let it move through his brain so that it wouldn’t burn him like nettles, the way it did now.

  There were crosses drawn in the back of the diary. The page was covered with little crosses for the dead, the pen’s grooves almost tearing through the paper. No names.

  COMRADE PARTS PUT the notebook carefully back on the desk and started leafing through notes he’d made on the bandits’ newsletters. Toward the end the news grew more tedious—they were trying to raise morale, that was clear. You could also tell that they were worried about a lack of new blood in the ranks. By the time Stalin died, most of the illegals had already been removed—662 bandit groups and 336 underground organizations. How many had succeeded in lying low in the forest? Ten? Five? Was Roland still in the forest? Alone, or with someone, or even with a whole group? Or had he accepted amnesty? Many who had been hiding in the woods had done it, but if he had, there would be some record of it. And if he’d been legalized, he would have been interrogated about what happened at Klooga, there would be some mention of his testimony. No, Roland hadn’t taken amnesty. Could he have managed to obtain a new identity anyway? The flood of Russian Estonians and Ingrians into the country had given a lot of illegals an easy way to get a temporary passport. Passports were stolen from trains all the time, and for a short while merely reporting that yours was missing and being able to speak rudimentary Russian was enough to be granted a temporary passport—all you had to do was say that you had come from the Leningrad oblast, and that a local person could provide you with a place to stay. The ones who cheated that way had been caught when their passports expired. If Roland was one of them, how would he have gotten new papers? And who would he have talked to over the years, who would he have been in contact with? He would have needed help from someone, he would still need it, whether he was in the woods or living among people.

  Parts picked up a pencil and scribbled a few faint words on the blotter: “The last I heard of my cousin he was in Canada or Australia. I would be grateful for any information I can find about him—he’s the only family I have left.” He would go to the offices of Kodumaa tomorrow and place an ad. As long as the Office didn’t know he was looking for the author of the diary, he could look for his cousin and people who knew him without worrying, explain that it was his method of arousing sympathy among expatriate Estonians, adding to his trustworthiness in their eyes. Parts had already succeeded in using Kodumaa to track down several people and establish confidential contacts. Kodumaa was sent to Estonians abroad, and was the only way to get a receptive response in the emigrant community. Ads framed as searches for missing relatives and friends aroused sympathy even among those who viewed the Soviet Union with suspicion. Founding the paper had been a brilliant move on the part of the Office. Parts’s job thus far had been to gauge the emigrant mood, the emigrants’ homesickness, any loosening of their mistrust, but now the situation had changed. Perhaps he could just suggest directly that he post fabricated ads from long-lost relatives in Kodumaa, searches for people whose names were on the lists of Klooga eyewitnesses. Someone must know something, or know someone who knew someone, and they trusted Parts. He’d been to Siberia, he didn’t belong to the party, he had a Laidoner badge.

  His only failure had been with Ain-Ervin Mere. When he was questioned about the time Mere served as the leader of Gruppe B of the German security police, he shouldn’t have exaggerated the depth of their friendship—but who could have predicted that Mere would refuse
to collaborate with the Office? The decision had been surprising, especially when the information submitted by the Directorate of State Security had turned up such unobjectionable material: Mere had served as a Chekist in the National Internal Commissariat before the Germans came. Parts had been told to bring this up when he contacted Mere—or Miller, which was the name Mere was known by in his years in the Internal Commissariat. So when Parts had started working on Mere, he had reminded him in a letter how they’d met at the old mill and playfully called his old friend Ain Miller. Major Mere never answered his letter, which was awfully stupid of him. Parts was absolutely certain that he could have gotten a better result if he’d been allowed to visit the major at home in England, but no, all he could do was write. He wouldn’t make such a clumsy mistake again. At Parts’s request, his testimony in Ain-Ervin Mere’s trial wasn’t written up in the pages of Kodumaa, although the case was otherwise dealt with in the paper at length—it didn’t suit the image he was presenting of himself among the paper’s readers abroad; they had no faith in the Soviet courts.

  IT WAS A BIT of a miracle that Roland had never been located, all the more so since his information could be clearly seen on the Klooga lists; those who’d been imprisoned at Klooga and survived or evaded the Germans’ evacuation were suspected as spies. So Parts wouldn’t be the only one looking for Roland, but he had to be the one who found him, or he might find himself serving as a witness in the same courtroom with him. There was a pressing need for Klooga witnesses at the moment, with the Hitlerists under the microscope. If anyone knew that, Parts did. No one would be left untraced. His book was well under way now, and would provide the best possible cover for the task of getting his hands on his cousin.

  Tallinn, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union

  Mark was a textbook example of the degeneration and fascismization of the Estonians.

  PARTS TASTED THE WORDS he’d tapped out. The train rattling the window spoiled his rhythm, and the manuscript, growing page by page next to the typewriter, trembled. The sentence was pithy and sufficiently charged, but it was too cold, it wouldn’t stir anyone’s feelings. Nightmares—it had to give the reader nightmares. That was why the cannibalism in Ervin Martinson’s histories of the fascists had been such a stroke of genius, although Parts hesitated to call Martinson a genius. There wasn’t a child in the world whose dreams wouldn’t be disturbed by cannibals, and people weren’t going to change their opinion about someone if they’d been taught as children to think he was a cannibal. Martinson had, with one word, twisted the wheel of history in the direction the department wanted. With one word! Emotion was stronger than reason, it argued against reason—they’d gone over that at the Office. Parts wiped the pastilaa off his fingers, rolled in a new sheet of paper, and looked at the most recent guide titled “Prohibited Information in Print Publications, Radio, and Television.” He checked his word lists. Comrade Porkov had been skeptical when he gave Parts responsibility for the book. The words for arousing negative emotions were in one list, those for positive emotions in another. At first Parts had thought that such a tight rein would spoil any possibility of developing his own voice, of refining its eloquence. But using the lists eventually became second nature to him; the filter was a sensible one.

  It was well known that Mark had taken his superior officers as a model in decorating his Christmas tree. He decked it with the gold rings of Soviet citizens who’d come to the camp and never left, and he let his children dance in a circle around the tree and admire it.

  Parts cracked his knuckles. He couldn’t quite remember where he’d seen a tree decorated like that, or whether he had seen it himself, but the image was so powerful that he had to use it. It would also strengthen negative feelings about Christmas trees in general, which wasn’t a bad thing. Had he found the right wording? He screwed up his mouth. Maybe. Maybe he should add some more eyewitness information. A woman forced to witness this grotesque exhibition.

  Maria, a woman brought to the Tartu concentration camp, felt fortunate to be chosen as a servant in Mark’s household. She was fortunate to avoid a crueler fate, and fortunate to be able to steal scraps of food from the house, but unfortunate in having to serve Christmas dinner while the glow of the Christmas candles lit up the rings of Soviet citizens who’d been killed. Was her mother’s ring among them? Her father’s? That was something she would never know.

  Comrade Parts had been banging on the Optima so furiously that he’d struck holes in the paper, the letter arms had gotten tied in a knot, and the keys refused to move. The rings of Soviet citizens? Or should it be Jews? Would the mention of Jews push the sufferings of the Soviet citizens into the background, diminish the dignity and the sorrow of the Soviet people, perhaps even pose a threat to it? Parts had noticed that in the Western books he had locked in his cabinet, Jewishness was distinctly emphasized.

  He untangled the letter arms, freed the paper from the roller, and stood up to read a few lines aloud. The text was already starting to have some punch. Women. He ought to focus on women. Women always aroused emotion. Maria was definitely a good character, she would generate sympathy. Mark wouldn’t be evil enough if there weren’t people around him to bring the evil out, someone whose eyes the reader could look through and see the Christmas tree, the Christmas dinner. Yes, he needed Maria’s testimony. Or was he crossing a line, making it too sentimental? No, not yet. He didn’t dare add any more cannibalism. There was already so much of it that he’d had to cite Martinson’s books over and over. They were among his recommended references. But in the future his own works might produce a similar flood of references, adding weight to his reputation, his credibility, citation by citation. Still, his fingers felt heavy when he typed Martinson’s name.

  Parts curled his toes on top of his slippers and broke off a piece of jelly cake. Martinson’s book offered the perfect character for Parts’s purposes: Mark—unidentified, without even a surname, a brute, a war criminal who was never caught. It wasn’t even clear if he’d committed his despicable acts under his real Christian name. That’s why it was easy to continue the story. He could find testimony about Mark’s deeds, but nothing about Mark himself. Parts shook his head and pondered how his colleagues’ mistakes had eventually turned to his advantage. He could see from the files that the security organs had used young, inexperienced men, that they had lacked guidance. There had obviously been a shortage of competent officers. During interrogations no one had thought to ask for clarifying information or personal details. Many witnesses had talked about people using only first or only last names, making it impossible to trace them. It was only later that someone noticed how flawed the methods had been at the end of the forties. Hardly any of the witnesses were still alive, because merely being arrested had been evidence enough for execution. The fact that Roland’s information had been well recorded in the Klooga papers was a fateful irony.

  Mark was a muscular man with broad shoulders whose strength shocked all those who found themselves the target of his cruelty. Maria, who spent many evenings shining his shoes, remembered well how he would make calculations of how much iron he would get out of her, how much phosphorus, how much soap. She also testified that he taught his children their sums by counting out how many prisoners could be made to fit in the gray Brandtmann chocolate factory truck. The door of the gray truck would slam—

  Parts’s fingers halted over the keys. The slam he’d heard wasn’t from the door of a truck; it came from upstairs. His shoulders tensed. He listened. Silence. But the silence didn’t relax his shoulders, it only stiffened his neck more. He rummaged in the drawer for some aspirin, pulled off the wrapper, and unfolded the paper from around the tablets. The sentence he’d broken off wasn’t coming back to him. It was gone. The stiffness in his neck radiated pain into the back of his skull. This was no time for a headache. He was about to get up to fetch the Analgin from behind his wife’s valerian bottle in the kitchen, but he sat back down and swallowed the aspirin dry. He had work to
do. The jelly cake melted the taste of the pills out of his mouth. He lifted his hands to the keyboard, sent his mind back to the powerful, muscular figure of Mark. It was enough, the core of the whole thing. Enough to make the text believable. One word and his book would be in bookstores all over the East, all over the West, all over the world. He’d also tried adding a few lines borrowed from the diary, to lend his book authenticity, but the language was so different, and too vague—the manuscript had to have concrete details. Maybe he could mention the crosses at the back of the diary as crosses Mark drew as a record of the poor creatures he’d murdered. But was his Mark a person who would count his victims?

  Martinson was no doubt working on his next book right now, maybe something more about cannibalism, explaining how it was a natural Estonian trait, how the cannibalism of the Estonians in the fascist ranks had broken all bounds and without the liberation brought by the Soviet Union the Estonians would have eaten themselves into extinction. Parts’s chest tightened in irritation. He had to come up with something better than Martinson. He couldn’t let anyone surpass him. But just as he was catching up to the sentence that he’d broken off, his wife’s hard heels struck the floorboards and started knocking around overhead again—first only a few steps from the bed to the chest and back, as if she were practicing before getting up to speed. As if she didn’t plan on going back to bed. Parts put his hands on his knees. Auntie Anna had had the same problem back at the beginning of the fifties, in the countryside. Rats running in herds under the floor and behind the walls so that she couldn’t sleep. She’d written to him about it when he was in Siberia. That’s the way the times were back then—the rat population had exploded. They called them “emergency rats.” Now he had a wife like a rat.