by Sofi Oksanen
WHEN STURMBANNFÜHRER AUMEIER’S DRIVER pulled into Roosikrantsi early the next morning, Edgar drew the brim of his hat over his eyes, just in case. After the car came to a stop, the others got out to stretch their legs, but Edgar stayed in the back seat, saying he still felt weak and wanted to nap a little. Between his turned-up collar and his hat brim he saw the maid—the same one who had taken his coat the evening before—dash out to the street and almost collide with the handyman, who was wielding a broom on the steps. The ordinariness of the morning calmed him. The blackout curtains were raised, the smell of fresh-baked bread wafted from the bakery, the horses with their heavy carts clopped toward the commissary, and finally SS-Haupsturmführer Hertz came out, stopped to buy some nuts from a boy who was selling them, came over to say hello to Edgar and the other travelers good-naturedly, and got into his own car. The next moment the door flew open and Juudit ran out in a flowered housecoat that fluttered in the morning wind, and the breeze blew her to Hertz’s Opel Olympia, where she slid into the back seat, and he lifted his hands to her shoulders and caressed her sleep-tussled hair, her ears, with great tenderness. The sight of it blinded Edgar for a moment, flowed through him like he’d accidentally swallowed lye and there was nothing he could do about it, though it ate through him like deadly poison, because in that touch was all the love in the world, everything gentle and precious. The SS-Haupsturmführer was behaving like this right there in front of everyone—the joking boys, the junk sellers, the street sweepers—letting this woman run out into the street to say goodbye, even though the wind pressed her nightgown against her legs, the silk went sliding off her shoulders, and he repaid this exhibition by caressing her ear. Such a measure of impropriety, such a display of intimacy, belonged between the sheets, in the boudoir. Such a gesture was too good to waste on a tart. Edgar had seen how men were with war brides, but this was different. This was a display of something most people have just once in their lives, and many never have at all.
The scene replayed in Edgar’s mind again and again—the woman running to the car, getting in, the man raising his hands to her shoulders, stroking her hair and touching her ears. The movements wouldn’t stop repeating, the man’s expression of happiness, of having forgotten everything else, Juudit’s smile that made the cobblestones sparkle with love, the light on their faces. Edgar couldn’t avoid thinking of the two of them in bed, although he didn’t want to know anything about that, Hertz’s hands touching Juudit’s earlobes, her face, Hertz kissing her eyebrows, her nose. There was nothing exceptional about Juudit’s earlobes. Juudit was a simple girl. Beauty was not among her greatest gifts. And she was married. What right did such an insignificant female have to touch the Hauptsturmführer so obscenely, to traipse into drawing rooms that Edgar didn’t dare to enter? What right did she have to walk into the Germans’ world, just like that, without earning it? A woman gets into a car, the light comes on for a few private moments, darkens the day in the street, becomes a lighthouse in a black sea, and the two people inside don’t even notice it, because they don’t see the world around them, they don’t need it, they illuminate each other. The man touches the woman’s ears. The light comes on. Their light.
When he’d worked through these thoughts, Edgar realized that Juudit could be made use of in the beds of the Germans. That time would come. But before that happened, he would go deeper into the job he’d been given, take production inventories, visit his auntie Anna, make discreet inquiries as to what she knew about Juudit’s activities. He had no desire to live in Tallinn now. The muddy camp at Vaivara was his only alternative—he wouldn’t run into Juudit there. For the first time in his life, he hated his wife.
PART FOUR
Fascist agents of Germany were cleverly sent to Estonia even before the country was occupied by Hitlerist forces. One of these agents was Mark, whose fiancée absorbed her suitor’s teachings. According to eyewitness reports, Soviet prisoners often saw this woman washing a military coat and shirt, belonging to Mark, that was red with blood. She claimed that Mark had simply been dressing birds for dinner. “It was clear to me, however, that Mark took part in the execution of Soviets,” witness M. Afanasyev says. For the nationalists, murder became an everyday occurrence. After every bloodbath, the murderers arranged drinking parties or orgies, which Mark’s bride also took part in, shaking the plucked-out fingernails of Soviet citizens from her skirts.
—Edgar Parts, At the Heart of the Hitlerist Occupation, Eesti Raamat Publishing, 1966
Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union
HIS WIFE SHOVED the shopping bags piled on the table toward Parts as if she were expecting praise for buying groceries. The viscose lace at the hem of her slip quivered; blue smoke filled the room. Parts put his own purchases on the floor, opened the window, and pushed the rustling hopflower vines aside, keeping his motions steady, though he’d been startled by his wife’s unexpected appearance in the kitchen. What was going on? What did she want this time? When she had on several occasions expressed a desire for more fashionable towels, he hadn’t objected. He’d bought new Chinese terry cloth to replace the linen ones and fought to find Polish toothpaste to put alongside the tooth powder. He’d stood in line for a permit to buy a Snaigė refrigerator, then gone to the back of the requisite three more lines before finally managing to cut to the front to get the next-to-last refrigerator available that day. All of it was his responsibility, because when it came to creature comforts his wife’s job at the railway station was useless. If Parts should happen to want some drier frankfurters, he had to find them himself, making acquaintances at the combine who could get frankfurters before they were even sold to the shops, where they added water to increase the weight. It was useless to dream of fricadelle soup until he had a friend at the meat combine—the ground meat at the grocer’s was adulterated, sometimes with rat. All this took time from his work, but he did it anyway, for his own comfort and to keep his wife’s fits at bay. How much thinner did he have to stretch himself?
His wife pushed the shopping bags another centimeter toward him, but he didn’t give them a glance. A cold dinner would have to suffice. He wasn’t going to start frying cutlets today, or look at her purchases. He wanted some time in peace, before she started making more demands.
Surprisingly, she opened her mouth, her breath sour, and started explaining that she had spent the afternoon with Kersti, who also worked at the railway station, and that they had gone to such and such a shop, but it had been closed for inventory, and after who knows how many places closed for inventory they’d ended up at a place where a friend of Kersti’s worked, where there was a buzz at the back door, and they’d gotten oranges. She continued poking through the shopping bags and a cake box fell on the floor. Fresh pastilaa, she said, from Kalevi’s. His favorite jelly cakes.
Was it a car she wanted? A Moskvitch cost five thousand rubles. An impossible sum, an impossibly long line for a purchase permit, and he hadn’t received his advance yet.
“And then we went to see Kersti’s new apartment, in a high-rise. The kitchen is a little box. At least we have space to sit and eat, and to cook. She doesn’t, although otherwise the apartment’s very big and stylish.”
“That’s as it should be,” Parts said. “People can eat in the communal dining room. Who really needs a big kitchen?”
Conversation.
Their first in months.
She looked at him and reminded him that they were at home and it was just the two of them. Parts concentrated on arranging leftover pigs’ feet on a plate, careful not to touch his wife’s shopping bags, not picking the cake box up from the floor. He swallowed his disgust at her thick toenails poking in the air, swallowed the question of how her childless friend had acquired her new apartment—did she have a lover? His chances for an uninterrupted evening were dwindling. Maybe he should give her the brown envelope from the Office now—money always calms women down. Her breath smelled like a pharmacy. That was nothing new. But as he walked past her, he noticed a
slight smell of dry shampoo, and her hair did have an unusual lightness about it. As if she wanted to impress on him that she was in her right mind.
“Why are you talking to me?” Parts said, emphasizing every word.
She flinched, her bluster peeled away, and fell silent. The ash on her cigarette grew, the coffee cup shook in her hand, and Parts closed his eyes, didn’t say anything. There were only a few unbroken cups left in the coffee service, which had, after all, been a gift from Auntie Anna. He remembered what had happened the last time. His wife had laughed, said it didn’t matter, they didn’t need a whole setting, since they never had any guests.
“They were so happy with the new apartment. It’s no wonder. Everybody’s getting on with their lives and careers, starting families, happy families, but for us this could be our last day in Tallinn. You behave as if you don’t even realize that.”
Parts looked his wife in the eye for the first time in years. Her once beautifully open eyes had been swallowed by flesh. Pity stepped into the kitchen and scraped the scales from Parts’s irritated words. His voice softened.
“I don’t intend to ever go back to Siberia. Never,” he said.
She turned on the radio.
“Are you sure? I listened to the Ain-Ervin Mere trial on the radio, and all the programs about it. I went to the Officers’ House, too, and watched the beginning of the performance outside. You people no doubt knew exactly who was there, but I put on a scarf and sunglasses. Look for me in your photos—I’m sure you’ll have plenty of them.”
Parts sat down. The radio blared and his wife lowered her voice so that he had to read her lips to understand what she was saying.
“Why in the world did you go there?” he asked. “Mere wasn’t even there. He’s in England, and they’ll never extradite him.”
“I had to. So I would know what it was like. What it sounded like, what it looked like.”
She lit a new cigarette—the old one was still smoking in the ashtray. The shout of the radio made the smoke and ash dance.
“For heaven’s sake, it was just a show trial! Ain-Ervin Mere wouldn’t agree to keep working with us, that’s all!”
“So he made a mistake. Are you sure you won’t?”
Parts was taken by surprise, and hissed, “Mere was an important agent. I’ve never been a man of any significance. They don’t arrange theater like that for little people.”
“What if they’re looking for just those kinds of people, as a warning to others? You’ve already been convicted once of counterrevolutionary activities. Or do you think that testifying in the trial made you a hero for all time?”
Her elbow shoved the grocery bags again. An orange fell out of one. It rolled into the hallway. Parts wondered if he should tell her more about the book project. No. She would enjoy the rewards once it was written, but there was no need to tell her what the Office’s plans were, or the part the book would play. He poured himself a cup of the grain coffee she’d made and sat down at the table. She slid the ashtray back and forth. Ashes flew into his cup. He swallowed the surly words that rose to his throat.
“I don’t want to be next,” she said. Parts twisted the radio knob louder. “We got some new girls at work. One of them immediately had to leave. They didn’t tell us why, but Kersti knew that her father was in the German army. I wait every day for the time when they come for me. I’ve been waiting ever since the Russians returned. I know they’ll come.”
PARTS WOULD WAIT one more moment before he began to type. He would wait for his wife to empty her bottle, and while he waited he would suck on the bones of the pigs’ feet. He wiped his fingers, unlocked the cabinet, and took out the journal. Could his wife know what Roland had really been up to after the rift between them? Anna and Leonida had passed on in the years when Parts was in Siberia, but had Roland been in contact with them, the careful Roland? Mothers always know something. The phonograph in the living room started playing Bruckner. The weak feeling brought on by his wife’s rare exchange of words with him was spreading. He lowered his fingers to the keyboard and pursed his lips. He could still go back to her, pick up the orange that had rolled into the hallway, peel it for her, take her hand, ask her to tell him everything she remembered, say to her: Let’s rescue each other. Just this once let’s blow on the same coal. There wasn’t much time. She could help him find Roland. She might remember details that he didn’t, might be able to guess things he couldn’t, places Roland might have gone, people he might have contacted. He could show her the journal. She might recognize the handwriting, too, or even the people mentioned. What if she held the key to his questions about Roland? This could be the right moment. Maybe she was frightened enough, finally ready after all these years. Why else would she bring it up, tell him she’d gone to watch Mere’s trial? Was it a sign that her pride had finally crumbled? Had her desperation destroyed it, or was it the realization that no one but Parts could protect her future? Why couldn’t he take that small step, take her by the hand? Why couldn’t he trust her even that much, this one time?
Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union
In 1943 Mark thought of a way to make some money. Because some of the Hitlerist crowd understood that Fascist Germany would lose, many of them already had a backup plan—to make it to the West, where they could sabotage the opposition to the Third Reich and continue to spread Hitlerism. With the help of some fishermen friends, Mark started assisting these good-for-nothings with their insidious plan to escape to the naively welcoming West. Because he’d been a celebrated athlete during the days of bourgeois Fascism in Estonia, his face was well known and he was admired, so it was easy for him to make contacts. He asked to be transferred from Tartu to Tallinn. He had already proved his ability in the Hitlerist intelligence service, so the Tallinn Fascists welcomed him. He found an apartment where he could conduct Fascists to wait for transport by boat. The apartment belonged to his fiancée’s mother, a woman who had betrayed her people with a Fascist officer—
PARTS LOWERED HIS WRISTS to the table and wiped his damp neck with his handkerchief. His wife’s heels had started up again, like a pounding rain, but the text was nevertheless flowing well. Word choice was tough, though. Lover? Fascist female? He shouldn’t use the word “whore,” it was too strong—in poor taste, in fact. A woman in an intimate relationship with an SS officer? A Fascist Estonian woman in an intimate relationship with an SS officer? A woman who adored Hitler and was in a filthy relationship with an SS officer? A Hitlerist bride? An occupation bride? Or would “Hitler-loving war bride” be the most elegant choice?
Parts thought about his wife’s nature, her friends in her younger years, his deceased mother-in-law, and tried to find the precise phrase. His wife would no doubt have been able to think of something. He remembered the childish hope that had kept him alive until he returned from Siberia—the hope that their shared past in a country that was becoming something new would form a foundation for their union, that they would understand each other in a way no one else could. They were starting from a good place. His wife hadn’t divorced him, although many others had divorced while their spouses were in Siberia. He hadn’t received a single letter from her, but she had sent packages—as many as were allowed. His store of hope had a strong foundation, and during the Ain-Ervin Mere testimony he had even wondered whether he ought to bring her with him on the kindergarten visits. She could have given presentations on her husband, the heroic witness, thanked the Red Army for saving his life; they could have posed for photos with the children, she holding a bouquet of carnations. Maybe the Office would have seized on that idea if they’d had children of their own, or maybe the Office had been conscious of his wife’s past, and didn’t think she was appropriate for kindergartners. It was for the best. Her breakdown had been quite sudden.
Parts considered himself experienced enough to understand the primitive instincts that sometimes possessed his wife, and he had once suggested to her that she could find a companion, get a bit of contact with youn
ger men. It would have had a calming effect, given her other channels for her drives and emotions, at least allowed him to work in peace, but she had reacted by shutting down. This upset him. Contrary to what she imagined, he knew from experience how helpful it could be to act on these cravings, how it made a difficult life more bearable, if not exactly delightful. At the camps he’d quickly learned how the law of the jungle asserted itself in that world—the animal instincts. Some of the other boys were let into the criminals’ barracks because they had beautiful faces; Parts had to demonstrate his unusual skills to be let in, but once he was accepted, life became manageable. No one dared to come and get him there, to take him to the woods or the mines, and he’d set up an exchange with the doctor for Vaseline, since, like the criminals, the doctor, too, needed a forger. But he’d put those crazy times behind him now, drowned those memories out of his mind like unwanted kittens thrown in the river; the sweaty clutches on his neck had faded into the lost longings of the past.
Parts had discussed his wife’s situation with a doctor, who said his suspicions were probably correct. An empty womb had almost certainly caused her unstable condition—she might be infertile. He recommended seeing a specialist. Parts hadn’t dared to suggest that to her, although according to the doctor, barrenness could be a cause of personality disorder. If she’d had a child she might have had something else to focus on during the trial, and her collapse might have been at least partly averted. Besides, they could have given a child a good life; the house would have made the child an eligible prospect, as would Parts’s respected position. He certainly wouldn’t have minded having a little fellow around. He’d even done what he could to effect such an outcome with several attempts at conjugal activity, until he’d retreated to the sofa bed, and finally dragged the sofa into his office. It was rough going, presenting himself as a normal family man without having any offspring, and communicating with the Office staff would have been easier if they could have socialized with other families; in fact, it would have made his job go much more smoothly if he had a child he could show the world. He should talk to the Office about it. He’d heard from one recruit who had been turned when the Office arranged an adoption for him in only a week.