by Sofi Oksanen
Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat
WHEN THE TRUCK full of foresters left Tallinn in the morning, I intended to slip in among them. Before leaving I’d packed up all my things in the attic of the Merivälja villa. The house was deserted, which made it perfect, but I felt uneasy there, like I always did in places where life had vanished. The Germans have eaten all the doves from here, too; you no longer hear their cooing behind the barn. Stray cats have taken over the rooms and verandas, making a racket. I spent the last night in the barn just to be safe. At the front door of the house I noticed that the board I’d set up as a trap had been moved. Carefully moved, but moved nevertheless. It may have been only a cat, but I loaded my Walther and listened. I crept across the veranda, across the drawing room. I could see that someone had stumbled into the sheet-covered armchair. As I climbed the stairs, I stepped over the squeaky steps. I stood next to the attic door, opened it a crack, and almost shot Richard, who was waiting inside.
“How did you know where to find me?”
I was holding my pistol against his temple. Richard was speechless with shock and could only manage to stutter that he was alone. He knew the password. I lowered the gun.
“I was ordered to come here,” Richard said. “I have to leave the country.”
“Judging by the trail you left, you wouldn’t have noticed if you were followed.”
“Two officials of the Internal Directorate have disappeared,” he said. “They’re starting to give me funny looks. You have to help. I brought forged travel permits for you.”
I quickly gathered up my things and told him to follow me. There was no time to lose—I was certain that he had been tailed. We would leave over the roof.
THE MAIL GIRL FOUND me some German armor and a couple of bottles of cartridges from a stash in the forest. I asked her to take care of Richard while I arranged a place for him on a ship or motorboat. Richard put a folder on the table and said he’d taken as many B4 files as he could. I gave him the money Juudit had given me. As I opened the folder he put the money in his pocket and warned me that I wouldn’t like what it said.
“It’s a political police report, all originals.”
“Dorpat is a surprisingly European city in spite of the misfortunes of recent years. According to Reichsminister Rosenberg, the Baltic countries have a European character. Unfortunately, the Reichsminister’s excellent racial theories are unknown here, since the Bolsheviks have kept the country isolated from the civilized world.
“The measures we recommend are to attempt to apply the research findings of the Reich’s new Historical Institute to Estland, and perhaps it would be advisable to establish a separate Referentur here. Otherwise the Estonians won’t understand how important the Jewish question is. During Estland’s independence the Jews had cultural autonomy. For that reason it would be wise to investigate how much damage was done to Estland under conditions in which there were no restrictions on Jews, and how much the treachery peculiar to the Jews has advanced in such a social environment. The criminalization of anti-Semitism in 1933 was doubtless the result of Jewish machinations, from which we can deduce that the government is very weak or the Estonian race of particularly low intelligence. The race, however, is quite hybridized, so this characteristic would be surprising. It’s also possible that the government has degenerated to an exceptional extent or that Jews have even taken part in government. Research is needed into how such a negligent regime has held together at all. Perhaps it would be best to make Estland the largest reserve for Jews in Reichskommissariat Ostland. On the other hand, Commander Sandberger has stressed that pogroms would not be suitable for Estland because of the country’s unusually pro-Jewish history. The country has been saved from complete destruction by the influence of its citizens of German heritage. There is also an unusually small number of Jews, much fewer than in Latvia or Lithuania. Perhaps they know how to disguise themselves well enough that the original population takes no notice of them.
“We have chosen individuals with Germanic characteristics as local contacts. The Baltic Germans sent back to Estland by the Reich have found many suitable individuals.
“A parallel line is extremely important in the rest of Reichskommissariat Ostland as well, absolutely essential for the final solution.”
I put down the folder and asked the mail girl for something to drink. Richard opened up his tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette for each of us. The mail girl started to cry.
“Read the last pages,” Richard said. “Where they talk about ‘operations.’ They’re talking about the deportations in June.”
“The Estonians behaved like Jews, all marching obediently onto trucks and trains. There were no unfortunate incidents. The women and children cried, that was all. Giving them permission to bring their belongings calmed them, just as it had the Jews.”
I put the papers down again. The mail girl came and sat with us. Her wet eyes were as round as on a bombing night. I thought about my father on the train. I couldn’t think any further than that.
“Who wrote these?” I asked.
“Your cousin.”
“Edgar?”
“He goes by Eggert Fürst. He showed up in our department and I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone his former name. He claimed he had remarried and taken his wife’s name, but it sounded like a lie. Supposedly his first wife was an adventuress who had left him. He said something about bills of exchange.”
“You didn’t tell him about our activities?”
Richard looked offended. “Of course not.”
I believed him, but I knew how clever Edgar could be.
“What does he do besides typing up reports to Berlin?”
“I don’t know. He gets along well with the German officers. His German is fluent. Behaves almost like a real Aryan.”
I mentally cursed the attack on Rosenberg’s train. All of our plans were at risk now, and I was slinking away like a dog. I continued reading. The Germans were gratified that police forces had been assembled so quickly in spite of the fact that the Soviets had liquidated the police department over the summer. They saw the Russians’ operations as a great help in softening the Estonians—no one wanted to take any notice of the traffic to the way-station camps, let alone the full railcars. No one wanted to be in those cars.
“But why do the Germans compare Estonians to Jews? Are they planning deportations in Germany?” I asked. “Or here? Have they already done something to the Jews like what the Bolsheviks did to us? Who’s learning from whom? What the hell are they up to?”
“Something terrible,” the mail girl whispered. I remembered that her fiancé, Alfons, was Jewish. Alfons had offered Jews fleeing Germany a place to stay here, but refused to go to the Soviet Union when the Germans were advancing on the country. His father had been deported; he had no illusions about the Soviet Union. I looked at the mail girl.
“We’re all going to be killed,” she said.
Her words were brittle and certain. I felt dizzy. I could see Edgar’s shining smile.
Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat
EDGAR COULDN’T SLEEP. He got up to mix himself a glass of sugar water and drank it all at once. In the morning he was going to meet SS-Untersturmführer Mentzel at security police headquarters. Mentzel wanted to hear how he had been doing since his transfer to Tallinn, and Edgar had to make a good impression. He was nervous. Mentzel’s visit was coming at just the right time: the Estonian security training in Germany had ended and the trainees had been greeted in Tallinn with such celebration that it had robbed Edgar of his peace of mind, clawed worry lines in his brow. If the country filled up with specialists trained in Germany, would they advance more quickly than he had? Would there no longer be any use for his skills in important operations? Would he no longer be needed?
He checked his suit again; it was freshly bought, newly fitted with a stiff lining. He had brushed it twice that evening. Its former owner�
�s left shoulder had been lower than the right, and Edgar had had to stuff the right shoulder with cotton, but the two sides still didn’t match. It would have to do—his older suit had been mended too many times. If the meeting with Mentzel went well, perhaps he could take it to a better tailor, or even get some wool on the black market for a new suit, double-breasted.
SS-UNTERSTURMFÜHRER MENTZEL began the meeting with thank-yous: the information Edgar had provided had proved reliable, unlike that of many others, and his reports were unusually professional. Edgar began to breathe more easily, but he also smelled eau de cologne. In his effort to make a good impression he had managed to spill the entire bottle on his new suit. Dabbing it with a damp cloth hadn’t helped, and there had been no time to air the suit out. To keep the cloud of cologne from filling the entire office, he tried to move as little as possible, after scooting his chair surreptitiously farther from his German interlocutor. When Mentzel didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, Edgar took courage. Perhaps Mentzel was just showing German refinement, or perhaps Edgar’s nervousness simply made him imagine that the cologne was stronger than it was.
“What are your impressions of the political police B4 section, Herr Fürst? Tell me your candid feelings,” Mentzel said encouragingly.
“The headache there is caused by so many troubling cases of local informers making accusations against each other, Herr SS-Untersturmführer. Accusing anyone at all of Bolshevism, secret nests of communists seen where there aren’t any, three different versions of the same sabotage story. The motive seems to be pure envy, resentment, revenge, anything the minds of a lower order can be led to,” Edgar said. “Once there was even a denunciation of someone in the employ of our Referentur. When cases like these are given attention, it’s hard to concentrate on matters essential to our progress. And uneconomical, in my opinion.”
Mentzel listened carefully, leaning slightly forward, and the nervous tingling in the soles of Edgar’s feet disappeared, a gust of confidence splashing over him as unexpectedly as the contents of the bottle of cologne that morning, but in a good way. It made the pads sit on his shoulders as if he’d had the suit custom tailored just for him, and a feeling of expertise straightened his back.
“The situation has to be gotten under control or we’ll begin to look completely ridiculous. This is not how Germany operates. And Germany will not be taken advantage of!” Mentzel shouted. “Cognac?” he asked. “It’s Latvian. It tastes a bit like gasoline, unfortunately. Another lamentable problem is the question of why so few Estonians have registered for our voluntary armed forces. We were expecting much greater enthusiasm.”
Mentzel stressed that he didn’t want “correct” answers—all he wanted was the truth. Edgar swirled the cognac in his glass with a small motion of his wrist and watched the swirling liquid with great concentration. An irritating gust of cologne had circled the room as he reached for the glass, and his feeling of confidence had fractured. While he was talking he hadn’t noticed the smell. Mentzel’s encouraging attitude had helped. Or had he just imagined it? He hesitated. He had to play his cards right, but he didn’t know which cards were right and which were wrong. After B4 had been moved to Tõnismägi, into the same office as the German security police, he’d watched sourly as the others advanced their careers from one post to the next, took up challenges, hurried out in their parade uniforms covered in more and more valuable stripes, while he wasted his skills on spiteful, simpleminded gossips and their accusations.
Edgar screwed up his courage. “There are rumors among the public that after the war the Estonians will be relocated beyond Peipsi or to Karelia, Herr SS-Untersturmführer. These rumors cause the people to doubt whether the German army is the right choice for an Estonian. The June deportations have made Estonians sensitive to anything that involves leaving their homes or their country.”
Mentzel raised his eyebrows and rose from his chair. His shoulders tightened, the cognac shook in his glass, his stripes trembled.
“This is absolutely confidential. It’s possible that relocation will affect the Baltic Jews, and perhaps also the coastal Swedes, but the Estonians? Under no circumstances. Is gratitude a concept entirely unknown to the Estonians?”
“I am certain that there is no limit to the gratitude of the Estonians when it comes to the Reich’s liberation of our country. The general mood is very calm, no one is planning to bomb Wehrmacht transportation, or offer any other resistance—with the exception of a few random Bolsheviks. But the food shortages make people rather nervous. There might be more recruits if the men could carry the Estonian colors.”
“I’ll see what I can do about it. Is there still talk of a Greater Finland?”
“Hardly at all. I’m not concerned about that.”
The meeting ended. Edgar got up and caught another whiff of eau de cologne.
“I’ve recommended you to one of my colleagues. You’ll receive further details later. He’s looking for a reliable perspective on the situation from a local’s point of view. You can feel free to present your own opinions, Herr Fürst.”
IT WAS a relieved man filled with optimism who stepped out of headquarters. It made Edgar smile to think of how hopeless he’d felt when the train carrying the new batch of security police arrived—the train windows hanging loose, some of the cars piled with birch branches. On the platform he’d cursed the fact that he hadn’t tried to join earlier, hadn’t followed someone other than Roland. He should have been among the handsome young men coming home, listening to the speeches of senior representatives of the German security forces at the railway station, the friendly words of SS-Obersturmführer Störtz and SS-Obersturmführer Kerl, the stirring oratory of Director Angelus.
His worry had been increased by the fact that men who had trained on Staffan Island were designated as Finland volunteers, so the ban against granting the iron cross to fighters from Estonia and other conquered countries of the eastern regions didn’t apply to them—they were so highly valued that there was a desire to skirt regulations so that they could receive the Ritterkreuz. And they did receive it. He felt a bitter envy when he heard that anyone with an iron cross around his neck was allowed into exclusive places, even Estonians. If he hadn’t gone with Roland, he might have a cross around his neck, too. But the game wasn’t lost yet; the meeting he’d just left proved that. Maybe one day his photos would be sold throughout the Third Reich, or at least in Reichskommissariat Ostland, and children would mix up paste to put his picture in their scrapbooks. Anything was possible. Edgar hadn’t seen his cousin since that awkward episode when Roland had driven him out of Leonida’s cabin, and the rift between them suited him fine. The damaging halt in the arc of his career that Roland had caused seemed to resolve itself. It was all behind him now—the days wasted sitting around the cabin, that tantrum about Rosalie, the utter madness that had burned in Roland’s eyes, his stubborn nagging about Edgar’s wife. His marriage was none of Roland’s business.
Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat
ALTHOUGH HELLMUTH HAD URGED Juudit to stay home on the fifth of October and warned her about the threat of a terrorist attack, Gerda stopped by and persuaded her to come along to see off the legionnaires.
“Terrorist attack? Pshaw. The boys should have the image of Estonian beauties in their eyes when they go off to war, not just weeping mothers. It’s our duty to go to the station!” She looked on as Juudit gave herself a beauty treatment, carefully mixing one part ammonia and two parts hydrogen peroxide with her fingers and dabbing it on her scalp with a cotton ball. Gerda thought Juudit ought to let a hairdresser lighten her hair—she would get much better results.
“Admit it—the only reason you’re dressing up is for the boys. But you don’t have to do all that yourself anymore. Sometimes I think you don’t realize that,” Gerda said reproachfully. “Let this be the last time! I heard that some girls are bringing provisions for the legionnaires. I figured I’d just paint my fingernails.”