When the Doves Disappeared (45 page)

Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union

C
OMRADE PARTS WATCHED
his wife from the second-story window. She looked peaceful sitting on the park bench. Her legs weren’t even crossed, they were stretched straight in front of her, and her arms were relaxed at her sides. The woman sitting next to her seemed to be smoking, taking long drags with furious motions, but his wife never turned to look at her. Parts could see only the side of her face. Her figure had broadened noticeably. He had never seen her so motionless, like a pillar of salt.

“A remarkable change,” he said. “She used to chain-smoke.”

“Quite. The insulin shocks have helped,” the lead doctor said. “We aren’t yet sure of her diagnosis. Asthenic neurasthenia or perhaps psychopathy combined with chronic alcoholism. Or asthenic psychopathy. Or paranoid schizophrenia.”

Parts nodded. The last time he’d visited the hospital, the doctor had told him about his wife’s nightmares. He hadn’t been allowed to see her that time because of the troubling side effects of the medication—her delusions had increased. But the treatment was only in its beginning stages. The doctor felt she was an interesting case; he had never met a patient whose symptoms were so focused on the unspeakable Hitlerists. A more commonly seen symptom was her nurturing instinct toward anyone
at any time, though that was more common in women who had suffered the tragic loss of a child. The doctor struck Parts as someone who could spend a long time figuring out his wife’s condition. He offered Parts a chair. Parts wanted to leave, but he came away from the window and sat down politely. Perhaps the doctor imagined that as the husband and the closest relative he needed special attention. The doctor seemed sorry that the wife of a man like Parts was being transferred. There were many patients in Paldiski 52 whom no one ever visited.

“Have any more delusions surfaced?” Parts asked.

“For now, no. I hope that the fantasies her mind creates will disappear as the treatment progresses. The illusion of a daughter remains. On her livelier days she talks continuously with her imaginary daughter—asking about her studies, giving her beauty tips, recommending hairdressers for curly hair, things like that. Completely harmless. Unlike her other fantasy figures, her daughter doesn’t arouse her aggression. It’s more a feeling of pride. She imagines that her daughter is a student at the university.”

“Perhaps it’s her childlessness that brought on the illness,” Comrade Parts said. “She would never agree to see a specialist about it, even when I insisted. Could all of this have been avoided if she had received treatment earlier?”

He let his voice crack ever so slightly, like a man attempting to hide his emotion, although his emotion was mostly relief. Judging by what the doctor said, his wife had finally gone completely nuts. The doctor hastened to assure him that he had no reason to reproach himself. These matters were always difficult.

“The interior minister recommends Minsk. That’s not such a long journey,” Parts said.

“You have no cause for worry. The new specialist psychiatric hospitals are very advanced. Your wife will get the best possible care.”

Parts left a box of Kalevi’s chocolates and a string bag full of oranges on the table for the doctor. He would never ask them to send his wife home. Since peace had come to his home, Parts’s thinking had become clear, transparent as glass. He had been much too sentimental, too careful. He should have done this a long time ago.

THE MORNING WAS
particularly clear, the light unusually invigorating, and the squirrels in the park gamboled around him as he left Paldiski 52 savoring the thought that he never had to see his wife again. This was the end, and the beginning. His steps grew lighter and lighter. He decided to take a long walk. He felt like drifting, like a balloon let loose. The first printing of his book had been eighty thousand copies, and they were already printing more. They’d only printed twenty thousand copies of Martinson’s piece of trash. Tomorrow would be his day at the restricted shop. He would buy some ground meat, and in a month he was going to the DDR, where he knew there had been a printing of a couple hundred thousand, and then to Finland, where the book had also been published. He would meet new people, make new contacts. But today—today was a day off. He had reason to celebrate, and in this celebratory mood he decided to explore the new places in the city, ride the new trolley from the Hippodrome to the Estonia. He bought some Plombir ice cream and continued walking with it in his hand, not feeling tired, until he noticed that he had walked all the way to Mustamägi. The students coming and going didn’t bother him at all anymore. In fact, he felt like he belonged among them, like his life was just beginning, too. The sun slipped out from behind a cloud, the wind blew the sky clean, the silicate walls dazzled, and he had to lift his hand in front of his eyes. At the corner of a hedge a pair of doves took off flying. He turned to look at them, but he couldn’t see anything, the sky was too bright. The air had brightened and made the sky as white as a chalked wall, bright as the white of Rosalie’s flesh against the whitewashed wall of the barn when she had turned to look at Edgar. So white and angry.

“WHAT ARE YOU
up to with those Germans?” she whispered. “I saw you.”

“Nothing. Just business.”

“You’re feeding them communists!”

“I would think that would make you happy. And what about you? What have you been doing there? Does Roland know that his fiancée has been making merry with the Germans late into the night?”

“That’s ridiculous. I was just going to the still at Maria’s house.”

“Then why didn’t you tell Roland?”

“What makes you think I didn’t? Leonida can’t always bring the food to the still. I have younger legs.”

“Should I ask him? Should I tell him you got tired of waiting for him to come home?”

“Should I tell your wife that you’re back?”

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t want to hurt her. That’s for you to do,” Rosalie said. “She’s better off without a sick, inadequate husband.”

“What are you implying?”

“I saw how you looked at that German you do your business with. I saw it when he was leaving.”

“Is looking at a person forbidden in your lunatic mind? How were you looking at him? Your eyes were shining, all right.”

“I saw him when he left, coming out from behind the fence. I saw. I know. Do you understand? But Juudit doesn’t understand. She doesn’t want to understand, can’t comprehend it. She’s never heard of the kind of sickness you suffer from. But I know there are men like that, men like you. I’ve thought about it for a long time, by myself. Juudit deserves someone better. I plan to tell her to annul the marriage. She has grounds for it. An abnormal husband, a sickness that makes you unable to perform, unable to have children like a husband should. I’ve looked it up. It’s a disease!”

Rosalie’s face creased and wrinkled, the wrinkles turning red, their white edges breaking apart as her hatred struggled out. It wasn’t in her nature to have feelings like these. She was a laughing, joyous girl. But no. Her loathing was stronger. It was overwhelming.

ROSALIE’S NECK WAS
slender as an alder twig. Like the twigs she would have used a few months later, tied into a broom to sweep the walls before they were whitewashed. Then she would have mixed the limewater, rattling the lime bucket, taken the new horsehair brush that Roland made from the horse’s trimmed tail, and pulled the walls toward the light, whiter and whiter toward the light, with fingers thin as cigarette holders, fingers that Roland so loved.

Glossary

SOVIET OCCUPATION OF ESTONIA
 (1940–1941, 1944–1991)

Anti-Banditism Combat Department
(in Estonian, Banditismivastase võitluse osakond, or BVVO)

A unit of the NKVD dedicated to fighting “banditism” (a term that encompassed purely criminal activity as well as armed anti-Soviet resistance) from 1944 to 1947. In 1947 the unit was merged with units fighting political banditry (armed anti-Soviet resistance) under the Ministry of Security.

Armed Resistance League
(in Estonian, Relvastatud Võitluse Liit, or RVL)

An underground organization formed in the Estonian county of Läänemaa that fought the Soviet occupation in the late 1940s.

Directorate of State Security

The Estonian branch of the KGB.

Estonian SSR

The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Glavlit

The main government censor of printed materials, television, and radio in the Soviet Union.

KGB
(in Russian, Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti)

The State Security Committee of the USSR. The KGB was responsible
for security and intelligence, with the exception of military intelligence, which was part of the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, or Main Intelligence Directorate). The Security Directorate of the Soviet Union went through many name changes: the Cheka (abbreviation of Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya, Emergency Commission, 1917–1922); the GPU (Gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravlenie, or State Political Directorate, 1922–1923); OGPU (Obyedinyonnoye gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye, or Joint State Political Directorate, 1923–1934); GUGB (Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or Main Directorate of State Security, 1934–1941; unit of the NKVD, 1941–1943); NKGB (Narodny komissariat gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, or People’s Commissariat for State Security) and MGB (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or Ministry for State Security), 1941, 1943–1945, 1945–1953; MVD (Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del, or Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation, 1953–1954); and KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, or State Security Committee, 1954–1991).

People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs
(in Russian, Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, or NKVD)

Soviet commissariat that included the police, secret police, firefighters, border guards, archives, and other functions (1922–1923, 1934–1954). The Russian NKVD became the NKVD of the Soviet Union in 1934. The MVD (Ministry of the Interior) was founded as its successor organization in 1946. There were no people’s commissariats following the war—their functions were taken over by the ministries. The MVD continued the commissariat’s activities, although certain of its functions were given to the KGB when it was established in 1954.

Staffan Island

An island off the southern coast of Finland near Espoo where the Erna units of Estonian fighters received Finnish military training in 1941 for intelligence gathering and guerrilla warfare in Soviet-occupied Estonia.

GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALIST OCCUPATION OF ESTONIA
 (1941–1944)

Abwehr

Wehrmacht military intelligence and counterintelligence authority, 1921–1944.

Amtsgruppe D

The subunit of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS Main Economic and Administrative Department) responsible for overseeing concentration camps.

Baltische Öl

Baltische Öl G.m.b.H (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung), a German petroleum company operating in Estonia.

Dorpat

The German name for Tartu, Estonia.

Feldgendarmerie

The Wehrmacht military police.

Gruppe B

A division of the Estonian department of the German security police. The security authority was divided into the German sector (Gruppe A) and the Estonian sector (Gruppe B). The Estonian political police were known as Abteilung B IV (Department B4).

Legionnaires / Estonian SS Legion

The Estonian SS Legion was part of the Waffen-SS from 1942 to 1943. The legion wasn’t given the strength that had been planned for and didn’t participate as a force in battle. In 1943 the legion was replaced by the Estnische SS-Freiwilligen Brigade, which conscripted Estonian men born between 1919 and 1924. Forced-labor conscripts were given a choice between labor and the brigade.

Omakaitse

An armed domestic security force made up of Estonians. The Omakaitse was first established in 1917 to protect public and private property during a time when society couldn’t offer security. The first Soviet occupation abolished the organization. On June 22, 1941, members of
the Forest Brothers who had fled Soviet conscription refounded the organization and participated actively in the Summer War (July 22, 1941–October 21, 1941). Following the Germans’ victory parade, the Omakaitse’s weapons were confiscated and the organization was disbanded. Omakaitse was formed again in August of that same year, this time under the authority of the German occupation. In 1943 Omakaitse became compulsory service for men aged seventeen to forty-five, and in 1944 for men aged seventeen to sixty who were not subject to general conscription.