When the Doves Disappeared: A Novel
He guessed what she meant. Her husband had come to buy liquor and forgotten everything else. The same problem everywhere, in every kolkhoz, no one interested in working on paydays or when the shops had something to sell, even the cows left unmilked. Comrade Parts felt refreshed. The situation was progressing very smoothly.
He helped her put the jars of sour cream in her bag and led her out, her steps wavering as she pushed her leaning bicycle, the bag of bottles clinking, the silicate bricks of the village center breathing cold. The air smelled like snow and frost. The mood was oppressive, Parts cheery. Marta turned her bike into a driveway. Smoke curled from the chimney, there was mooing from the barn. Whitewashed trunks of apple trees lined the garden.
“It’s such a mess inside,” Marta said. “Maybe …”
“That’s completely all right, Marta dear.”
She glanced in the direction of the sauna. Parts stopped in midstep. He turned and ran toward the sauna. Marta ran after him, clutched at his hand, his coat. He kicked her away, left her shouting behind him, and pushed the sauna door open. Roland was asleep on the bench, his suspenders hanging from the top of his pants, his mouth open. Snoring.
Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union
Roland Simson, previously known as Mark, had become Roland Kask, and was living modestly, attracting no one’s attention, in the village of Tooru. His daughter Evelin Kask was studying in Tallinn. Who would have believed that a man pretending to be an exemplary father had just a short time before mercilessly shot infants before their mothers’ eyes? Who would have believed that people capable of such despicable acts were spreading their insidious disease to the next generation? Evelin Kask followed in her father’s footsteps. She had become an enthusiastic anticommunist and supporter of nationalist imperialism.
COMRADE PARTS LAID his wrists on his knees. The last chapters were starting to come together. Work was like child’s play now that he had his days to himself. The photographs for the book had already been chosen. He’d picked one of them to be a portrait of the author in the days of fascism. To their credit, the Red Army had photographed the Klooga camp as soon as they arrived, and among the photos of prisoners shot in the back Parts had found one to call his own. Luckily for him, emaciated people on the verge of death and those already dead bear a strong resemblance to one another.
Comrade Parts survived Klooga by pretending to be dead. He was one of the group of brave Soviet prisoners brought from Patarei to Klooga to be murdered. He witnessed the horrors. They tried to force him to burn the other Soviet citizens on pyres and he attempted to escape. He was shot in the back and seriously wounded. If the Red Army had liberated Klooga even one day later, he would have perished. Thanks to his resourcefulness he is a living witness opposing the Fascist cancer and telling the truth about it today.
Was that a good caption, or was the shooting a bit much? What if someone wanted him to prove it? He would think about it some more. There weren’t likely to be any more editorial comments from the Office, but he still had to flesh out the details, give them a dash of truth; then the book would be ready for its flight into the world. He had found the finishing touches for the story when he went to acquaint himself with life in Tooru Village, tasted the local color, estimated distances, researched landmarks, trudged to a cairn in the middle of a field where there was an unobstructed view of the Kasks’ house. He’d come equipped with galoshes and two pairs of wool socks in case of snakes. And binoculars, good for detailed observations of the life of the house, for watching the two scarf-headed women going about their work.
He wasn’t tired at all, even though the previous night had been raucous. The Office meeting had continued late over a meal, followed by one or two bars. It wasn’t the sort of thing he was used to, but why not, just once? He had managed to work in hints about the subject of his new project and indirect reminders of the Finnish experiences of his youth, had mentioned that blending in would be easy for him in Finland. As a respected author and research historian he would have a ready-made, entirely believable background, and the academic world wouldn’t pose a problem. It was time he started planning his future. Why not the Soviet embassy in Helsinki? The work of a cultural attaché might be pleasant. The reopened ship traffic between Finland and Estonia meant that the Office’s resources were stretched to their limits. The authorities had to hurry to acquire new working operatives, people who could be trusted, and there was a danger that they would see him as a suitable candidate for surveillance of Western tourists in Tallinn, for broadening correspondence with Finland, but not for a posting to Finland. He hoped his book would alleviate this problem when it was published. He didn’t intend to just watch as the boats left the harbor. He was going to be on one of them.
Or perhaps he could work for the DDR section of the committee for Estonian cultural relations abroad. His German was excellent. Maybe he could get into the German archives to do some research. He might even find something there about a man named Fürst. Up until now the name had never come up, but it might before long, either here or in another country. That might even be fun. Parts decided to look for someone at the head of the Office who had the committee in his purview, someone to whom he could suggest the idea. It would be better if his appointment to Finland or Berlin were someone else’s idea. Too much initiative could be dangerous. They would suspect him of wanting to defect.
Just a few pages more, then the climax. The impatient keys of the Optima danced merrily.
The Fascist officers had to hurry because the Red Army was approaching in full force in 1944. In the morning all the prisoners at Klooga were ordered to line up for roll call. To keep the situation under control, SS-Untersturmführer Werle lied and told the prisoners they were going to be evacuated to Germany. Two hours later the Commandant’s assistant, SS-Unterscharführer Schwarze, was leading the selection: the three hundred most physically sturdy men were pulled out of the lines. They were told they had been ordered to help with the evacuation. That was also a lie. In truth, the men carried logs to a clearing about a kilometer outside the camp. That afternoon, six more healthy Soviet citizens were chosen from among the prisoners. They were ordered to load a truck with two barrels of either petroleum or oil. The barrels were for the pyres. Mark supervised the building of the pyres.
At the camp, Mark behaved brazenly, as befitted his nature. Mark was the Germans’ henchman at Klooga just before the Red Army freed Estonia from Fascist slavery. The Fascists didn’t know what to do with the prisoners. There was no time to transfer the camp because the victorious Soviet Army was on its way and most of the prisoners had been so severely mistreated that they didn’t have the strength to travel. Boats were waiting at the harbor for the soldiers and officers, but what should they do with the prisoners?
Mark thought of a solution. He suggested the pyres.
The logs were laid on the ground with planks placed on top of them. The logs were of pine and spruce, the planks seventy-five centimeters long. In the middle of each pyre were four planks facing in four different directions. They were supported by a few pieces of wood, and were apparently meant to serve as a kind of chimney. The pyres covered an area of about six by six and a half meters.
At five o’clock in the evening, the sadistic murder of the brave Soviet citizens began. The victims were ordered to lie on the logs with their faces down. Then they were killed with bullets to the backs of their heads. The bodies were in long, tight rows. When a row of bodies was complete, a new row of logs was placed on top of them. The pyres were three or perhaps even four layers high. The place was twenty-seven meters from the forest road, the pyres about three or four meters apart. Eighteen more shattered bodies were found in a radius of five to two hundred meters from the logs. Fragments of bullets were found in the bodies. The dead were later identified by their prisoner numbers.
When the Soviet special commission investigated these atrocities, they also found a burned house nearby, of which nothing remained but the chimneys. In the foundation
of the house were found 133 charred bodies, some burned completely to ashes, making identification impossible. Everyone who was there at Klooga on September 19, 1944, is guilty of the mass murder of Soviet citizens and will be given the severest of sentences.
EPILOGUE
Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union
COMRADE 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).