When the Doves Disappeared: A Novel

by Sofi Oksanen

  Parts closed his eyes, let the sweetness of the cake dull his hearing, and concentrated on his research. The Office would probably be interested in the possibilities offered by someone like Mark, would probably want to cook up a Mark among the Estonians abroad in order to pressure some host country to produce such a war criminal, but Parts would think of some other name for the purpose and add it to his book. He was keeping Mark for himself. Mark was his star, and revealing Mark’s identity to the whole world would be his great moment. He would only give the complete information to the Office when the time was right. Not yet. Then the Office could worry about the final details. The real Mark could be anywhere—Canada, the United States, Argentina—or dead and buried. If he was alive, he would hardly have any objection to someone else being blamed for his actions. Of course it was too bad that the someone had to be Roland, but Mark was just such a perfect opportunity. As for Roland’s actual deeds, Parts had already chosen the best of them years ago, and made them his own.

  PART THREE

  We all know that there were women who participated in Fascist terrorism, in spite of their natural sympathies and their power to produce life. Females who sold themselves to Hitlerism were no longer women, they only looked like representatives of the female of the species. They had become representatives of the pillaging conquerors.

  —Edgar Parts, At the Heart of the Hitlerist Occupation, Eesti Raamat Publishing, 1966

  Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat

  JUUDIT WAS SITTING in Café Kultas, sitting and flirting in a way that was not becoming to a woman—especially flirting that way with a stranger. But there she was, cooing, preening, stroking her hair again and again, and Roland, who was trying to walk past her nonchalantly just a stone’s throw away, saw a coquettishness that made such a vivid impression on him that he kept bumping into people. Until he saw her coming toward the café from the direction of Karja Street, he hadn’t been completely sure that Juudit intended to follow his plan. Once he had spotted her, he turned on his heel, relieved, and disappeared into the bustle of Freedom Square in front of the café so she wouldn’t notice him. He hadn’t been able to keep his promise to her not to come around and check up on her. Juudit’s job was too important; he had to come and he had to stroll around with the other men, glancing at the roof of the Estonian Insurance Company building, shifting his gaze surreptitiously down the side of the building to the windows of the café, his eyes making the same motion over and over.

  ACROSS FROM JUUDIT sat a German officer, but it was the wrong one. The right officer was enjoying his coffee on the other side of the room, ruffling through the newspaper and puffing on a pipe. The blank SS insignia on his collar pulsed in the corner of Juudit’s eye; her sweaty hands held the arms of her chair, her heart was thumping, and she didn’t know what to say. The hot chocolate in front of her steamed, her hand slid down the chair’s arm, a bead of sweat appeared on her upper lip, and a wordless space opened up behind her forehead. She no longer missed the building’s neon lights and the street lamps, darkened for wartime. She gave off her own light. Her soul had stumbled into powerful motion and she was gripped by a fierce desire to be with this man, the very German sitting in front of her. Her heart was in a reckless state, her cheeks glowing as if she were still a girl, unaware of her desires, the backs of her knees wet with sweat in spite of the fact that her feet, wearing only stockings, felt chilled against the cold floor. There was an ice cellar behind her, a glow like a sweltering summer day in front of her, hot and cold taking turns, uncontrollable.

  She could still get up, leave him with the tongs in his hand, offering her a cookie, and find a way to nab the German Roland had chosen, to charm him, wrap her soft arm around his neck. But she’d already turned to this man, the wrong man, met his gaze, and, worse yet, in the man’s answering smile Roland and his plan and Rosalie in her unmarked grave and everything that had happened in the past few years was forgotten. She’d forgotten the bombs and the bodies lying in the streets, the beetles and flies descending on them, the desperate trading in tins of lard, her marriage and its respectability. She’d even forgotten that she was in her stocking feet, that her shoes had just been stolen, the only ones she had, no longer remembered the gang of thugs who’d pushed her down in front of the Kunstihoone Gallery and yanked her shoes off. She’d forgotten the pain, the embarrassment, the tears of anger and vexation, as soon as the officer had reached out his hand to help her up and taken her into the warm café and she’d made the fateful mistake of looking into his eyes.

  “You must let me see you home, Miss. You can’t walk outdoors in your stockings. Do be so kind, Fräulein. Or if you would grant me the honor of stopping by my place, I can ask my maid to fetch you some shoes. I live quite close by, on Roosikrantsi Street, on the other side of Freiheitsplatz.”

  WHILE JUUDIT WAS FALLING in love in Café Kultas, Roland was dodging snorting horses’ tramping hooves, soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and graceful mademoiselles clutching handbags. He made his way around the movie posters that he couldn’t bring into focus at the Gloria Palace; the cafeteria with its display window that made his stomach growl, where the servers flourished their scissors over customers’ food coupons; the street vendors, errand boys, steaming piles of horse manure, and straight city backs; and past the suspicious gaze of the porter at the Hotel Palace. As dusk fell among mere shapes, among his own thoughts, the cars with cold blue eyes, he stumbled into a young woman who let out a screech, and all the while Juudit was on her way toward love.

  JUUDIT GAVE THE MAID her coat and gloves. She took the rags from her feet herself—indignity had its limits. She was shown directly into the drawing room, although she tried to resist, and her feet left wet smudges on the patterned parquet floor. She reddened, more from embarrassment than from the chill, and as the German left to look for something to warm her up, she picked the rags up off the carpet and shoved them under the armchair. The man had wrapped the dishcloths around her feet, with the help of the waitress at the Kultas, and tied a piece of packing twine around them, paying the café for them, in spite of Juudit’s protestations. She was mortified by the repairs in the toes of her stockings, which stood out even in the dim light of the café, every single stitch. The reinforced toes hadn’t shown at all under the wrappings, but here in the drawing room the chandelier was mercilessly revealing as Juudit tried to curl her feet up and hide them. In a flash a basin of steaming water appeared before her, and next to it some mustard plaster, towels, and slippers with feather tassels, which stirred in a draft of air, on the toes. A handwarmer and a hot water bottle were placed on the sofa. The gramophone played Liszt. Juudit didn’t ask how the German valet was going to conjure up the promised shoes. Her lips were numb, though the room was warm, and she hardly dared to peep at the man as he came back carrying a crystal carafe and glasses. She shut her eyes and impressed his face into her mind; it wouldn’t be right to forget such beauty. A tremulous pulse throbbed against the handkerchief in her shirt cuff, the handkerchief’s monogrammed J rubbing against her skin—a J without a surname. The man set the tray on a low table, poured some wine into the glasses, and turned his back so she could take off her stockings. Juudit understood the gesture but didn’t know how to respond. She picked up the glass and drank the wine like water, greedily, to help her remember how to be a woman. In her marriage bed all of her attempts to behave like a woman had ended in shame; she didn’t want to remember those moments, so she drank more wine, brazenly poured for herself from the carafe and drank. The man turned his head a little, hearing the clink; his sideways glance locked on Juudit’s startled eyes, and his eyes were no braver than hers, no more elegant than Juudit’s frozen hand reaching to take hold of the top of her stocking.

  WHEN HE GOT OUT of bed in the morning, Hellmuth carefully covered Juudit with a goosedown quilt, gently tucking it around her feet, but Juudit threw off the cover and let the soft air of the room caress her skin. She lowered her feet onto the carpe
t, pointing her toes like she was putting them into a bath; she stretched her arms, bent her neck, the air pouring over her skin like new milk. The fuel shortage had made her greedy for warmth. But she wasn’t ashamed of it, of walking around naked on the thick carpet, of being alone in a room with a man she’d met only yesterday. The aroma of real coffee drifted into her nostrils, though she still smelled of liquor. They had drunk recklessly, for the pleasure of it. Or maybe they did it to cover the awkwardness of what they saw in each other.

  The clatter of Russian prisoners of war in their wooden shoes could be heard outside. Hellmuth put Bruckner on the record player and asked her to come with him to the Estonia Theater that evening.

  Juudit climbed back into the bed and pulled the cover over her legs.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not, Fräulein?”

  “Frau.”

  Hellmuth was handsome in his uniform, beautiful to look at. He went to the mirror to put his Ritterkreuz on his collar.

  “I would like to,” she added.

  “Then why can’t you, my lovely Frau?”

  “Someone I know might see me,” she whispered.

  “I’m asking you.”

  Hellmuth came and stood beside her, snapped open his cigarette case, and lit a cigarette, staring at his hands in such a way that she could tell he was as afraid of saying the wrong thing as she was.

  “Pardon me, but may I have one, too?” Juudit asked.

  “Of course. Forgive me. I can see I’ve been in Berlin too long.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look so young. In Germany smoking is forbidden for anyone under twenty-five.”

  “Why?”

  “They probably imagine it affects reproduction.”

  Juudit blushed.

  Hellmuth grinned. “I didn’t object to being transferred to Ostland, because I thought that at least I would be allowed to smoke in my office. The Reichsführer has forbidden smoking at work, as well, but I’m hoping that he can’t keep his eye on me when I’m this far away. Smoking is of course forbidden in government offices. There’s a permanent campaign against passive smoking.”

  “Passive smoking?”

  “Nonsmokers’ being subjected to others’ tobacco smoke.”

  “That sounds crazy,” Juudit said, then was embarrassed again. “I don’t mean to judge.”

  “The Reichsführer just wants the best possible fertility; he’s worried about the degeneration of the race, which is something I, too, should fight in every way I can.”

  HELLMUTH LIT another cigarette and put it to Juudit’s lips, and Juudit didn’t know what made her more dizzy, the cigarette or the gesture with which he offered it. She didn’t want this morning to ever end. Her head was still filled with the dew of night, her curls heavy with it, and when he looked into her eyes she could feel that all the while, under the tinkle of talk, their hearts were moving toward each other, and the idea of doing anything to stop that movement was impossible.

  “There are more and more restrictions all the time, so we should get as much joy as we can while it’s still possible. Smoking is already prohibited in theaters in Riga; soon it might be in Estonia, too, although no one is enforcing these rules yet. But I have to go. Duty calls. Will I see you tonight at the Estonia? It might be our last chance to enjoy a cigarette together as patrons of the arts.”

  He winked and there were sparks of something in his eye—and in those sparks, promises.

  Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat

  THE GERMAN I’d chosen left Café Kultas alone. I watched his officer’s cap receding, his short cape flapping, and I hurried inside. I didn’t see Juudit anywhere. When I asked the young waitresses if they’d seen a lady fitting Juudit’s description, they looked at me suspiciously and shook their heads. For the next few days I made one phone call after another to her apartment on Valge Laeva Street. She didn’t answer. I was starting to worry. Finally I asked Richard, our contact in the B4 section of the political police, to search for a woman named Juudit Parts and learned that she had been courted by a German, someone I’d never heard of, but an SS-Hauptsturmführer, no less. I digested this news, swallowed my disappointment, then found out the Jerry’s address. I relished the idea of sending my men after Juudit, frightening her. I would jump in front of her when she least expected it, show her I knew her comings and goings, the exact time she’d stepped out with her Jerry to the Nord or the casino. I imagined the look of shock on her face, how her head would sink into her fox collar, how her mouth, painted with lipstick and deceit, would disappear into the fur. It eased the stinging inside me. But I didn’t live out my fantasy because from what I could learn about him, he was a better catch than the German I’d chosen, and I didn’t want anyone in our ring to pay extra attention to Juudit. It was safer not to mention her name again. I would follow her myself, and when I’d gotten a good grip on her I wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze as hard as I could, to make it clear that she had no choice but to cooperate if she didn’t want her husband to know about her exploits, or the German to hear about her deception. I would never leave her in peace.

  Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat

  ROLAND MANAGED to find a room on Roosikrantsi so he could stalk Juudit whenever he could get away from his work at the harbor. He’d secured the job with papers surreptitiously obtained by Richard in the B4 office, and his days at the harbor were long. He left for work before Juudit was probably even awake, and came back to his building late at night. He received no replies to the notes he slipped under the door of the apartment on Valge Laeva—she rarely even went there, had moved to a different world whose doors were closed to Roland—and weeks went by before he saw her again, her scarf flapping as an Opel Olympia picked her up at her door. All Roland could do as the car and the boisterous group that packed itself inside sped away was stare helplessly after it and make a mental note of the names of the people leaving the building: General Commissar Litzmann and the ubiquitous, bleating Hjalmar Mäe. Once he caught a glimpse of Commander Sandberger himself coming out of the place. Juudit’s German had important guests, and many of them came and went after dark, some even using the servants’ entrance. The background information on these men that Richard had pilfered from B4 wasn’t pretty.

  GERDA’S GIGGLE COULD be heard from the Opel all the way upstairs. Juudit, holding Hellmuth’s hand, sat down beside her, and they drove straight into the liquid sunset. After they’d enjoyed a bottle of champagne and the ladies’ coiffures had been dampened by a summer rain, they’d decided to move on from the Shore Club to the lively tables at Du Nord. Hellmuth thought Du Nord had a better cook, and better Riesling. Juudit was so grateful for Gerda, who didn’t judge her, and in whose company she could show how much in love she really was. When they were sitting alone together on the divan in the Du Nord powder room putting on lipstick, Gerda turned to Juudit and said, “I assume you’ve taken precautions?”

  Juudit turned red.

  “I didn’t think so. It’s no wonder Hellmuth fell for you. Innocence like yours is rare in Berlin, take it from me. A woman’s best friend is her pessary—everything else is snake oil. I know a doctor where you can get one,” she whispered. “It’ll cost you, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem. Trust me, it’s completely discreet, and then you won’t have to worry.”

  Gerda wrote the doctor’s address on the back of a calling card and the greatest worry for a married woman with a lover was lifted. Juudit’s sigh of relief made Gerda laugh, and they giggled on each other’s shoulder there on the divan until Juudit started to hiccup and Gerda’s eyeliner smeared and they had to pull themselves together. The world looked so different now that Juudit could talk to Gerda about almost anything. When Juudit whispered that she was afraid of what her husband would think if he knew his wife was going around in public on the arm of a stranger, Gerda had just snorted. She thought Juudit would be crazy to leave Hellmuth, was sure that
Hellmuth would marry her because after all even Reichsminister Rosenberg had had an Estonian wife, the ballerina Hilda Leesmann. When Juudit pointed out that the Reichsminister’s career had advanced much more quickly once Hilda was carried off by tuberculosis and he’d switched to the German Hedwig, Gerda would hear none of it. Even when Juudit remembered that the Reichsminister was a Baltic German, not from Germany proper like Hellmuth, and a wife from the eastern outposts surely wouldn’t be wise for a real German SS officer, Gerda had just laughed at her arguments, and she laughed at them again as they sat on the divan.

  “Listen, you silly thing. It’s just a matter of making arrangements. I’ve been watching you two. My Walter looks at other women even when I’m right beside him, but Hellmuth never does. Walter says Hellmuth has a wonderful future, that he has a head for all kinds of strategies that I don’t understand. When the war’s over, he’ll be transferred to Berlin with medals on his chest and you’ll be parading around all the salons as his lady. You’ve chosen well. Your German is flawless, and you look like a regular Fräulein. That chin! And your nose!” Gerda bopped her lightly on the nose, and Juudit’s worried brow smoothed. “You didn’t go to the German school for nothing. I’ll bet you were at the top of your class. My dear, let’s go get ourselves a cocktail. Away with sorrow!”

  Gerda took hold of Juudit’s hand and squeezed. She made everything sound so simple, and maybe everything was simple, at least for the moment, here on the divan at Du Nord. Hellmuth had taken her to a whole new world where there was no place for the troubles of her old life. Yesterday Mr. and Mrs. Paalberg had exchanged a glance as Juudit was coming toward them on Liivalaia. Mrs. Paalberg had raised an eyebrow disdainfully and then they had turned to look in the bakery window, and Juudit had thought about how Gerda would have treated such a meeting, had just tossed her head and lifted her face from the street toward the sun, and once she did that she was in a good, even boisterous, mood again. Gerda hated the snobbery that women in twice-turned coats had toward her. She didn’t need people like them, or anybody else. Gerda was right. Now Juudit was watching a movie in their screening room on Roosikrantsi, which she liked because in a movie theater she might have run into someone she knew, someone she no longer had anything in common with. She also thought it was wonderful to invite Gerda over to watch Liebe ist zollfrei in her own private cinema. She no longer took part in complaining about having to walk everywhere or clucking about the infrequent public transport. She had the Opel Olympia and a chauffeur at her disposal. And she didn’t know what she would do if someone she knew sneered at Hitler or the Germans within earshot of Hellmuth—the Germans couldn’t understand Estonian, and people used it for a laugh. The Germans were much more easygoing than the Russians. Just recently Juudit had seen a boy pull a face at a German soldier and the soldier hadn’t cared in the least. She couldn’t imagine that happening under the Soviet authorities. Nevertheless, she didn’t let herself get drawn into anything like that when she was with Hellmuth. It wouldn’t be right, after all he’d done for her. He’d even promised to look for information about her brother Johan.