When the Doves Disappeared: A Novel

  Taara Village, Estland General Region, Reichskommissariat Ostland

  MY COUSIN EDGAR WAS standing in the cabin doorway and his mouth was moving. He was saying something about Rosalie, his hands gesticulating, but I didn’t understand why he was talking about my beloved. The wind blew in through the open door. My shirt flapped. The floor was dark with rain.

  “Are you listening? Do you understand what I said?”

  His shouting seemed to come from far away. The glass jar on the table crashed to the floor; there were buttercups in it. The wind whirled the flowers against the wall next to the mousetrap. I stared at them. Rosalie had picked them, with fingers that had just recently clasped mine. I was trembling like a tobacco leaf hung to dry, hot as tobacco in a sweating barrel. After the heat, a coldness started to spread from my chest down to my stomach. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. Edgar’s mouth kept clapping open and shut.

  “Did you hear what I said? She’s already been buried.”

  “Shut the door now, Wurst.”

  “Roland, you have to accept Leonida and Anna’s decision. The burial had to be done at night. There was a mark on her neck.”

  “Be quiet, Wurst.”

  I looked at the mousetrap. It was empty.

  “What do you mean, a mark?” I shouted.

  “There was a mark! Women have fragile minds. There’s no way of knowing what drove her to such a sin.”

  I was already on my way to harness the gelding.

  I DIDN’T GET any answers, but it was true: Rosalie was gone. Mother and Leonida treated me like a stranger; Leonida knotted her scarf tighter like she was trying to squeeze her face to nothingness and continued mixing the mash. I wasn’t wanted. Mother’s mouth hung open like a stuck door, without any words. I tried to pry some hint out of them about what had happened and why, who had been there and when, the names of the soldiers who’d come for lard and eggs. I didn’t believe my cousin’s filthy innuendos, didn’t believe she would have done herself harm. Mother’s eyes danced away from my shouts, told me to leave. I wanted to shake her. My hands were twitching. I would have hit her, but I remembered my father. He’d taken a worthless woman as his wife and it was a cross he bore without complaint, without argument. I’d become my father, in the sense that love had made me weak, but I didn’t want him to come home to a place where his son had raised a hand against his mother, not even if it was for love. I lowered my fist.

  “The girl has brought shame on this house with her sin,” my mother whispered.

  “Shame? What do you mean, shame? What exactly are you saying?” I yelled.

  Aksel came in from the pantry and sat down to take off his muck boot—his other leg was a wooden one he’d gotten in the War of Independence. He didn’t look in my direction, didn’t say anything. How could these people carry on as if nothing had happened?

  “Why didn’t you let me see her? What are you hiding?”

  “There was nothing to see. We never would have thought it of her, never believed she could do such a thing,” Mother said, tucking her handkerchief into her sleeve. The corners of her eyes were dry. “Be sensible, Roland. Talk with Edgar, will you?”

  I ran through the house. The threshold of the back room stopped me in my tracks. I saw Rosalie’s scarf on the chair. I rushed out of the house. The people living there had become strangers to me. I never wanted to see them again.

  IN MY DESPERATION all I could think of was to go to Lydia Bartels’s spirit session and ask for her help. Venturing into town was risky, but I needed some sign from Rosalie, a sign of where she was now, something to help me find the culprit, which no one else seemed to be interested in doing. I made my way to town on foot, taking the old cattle paths, the forest trails, ducking into the brush when a motorcycle approached or I heard the rattle of a cart or the clopping of hooves. I gave a wide berth to the manor house occupied by German headquarters and made my way to Lydia’s house through the deep shade. The village dogs were alert as soon as they noticed a stranger at the edges of their property, so I avoided the footpaths and walked in the middle of the road, ready to spring into the bushes if I heard anyone coming. From the road I could make out the outline of telegraph poles and a house, hear the clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the pounding of a hammer, a cat’s meow. The sounds of people who have a home. The sounds of people who have someone with them as they do their evening chores. All that had been taken from me. Anguish shriveled the outer reaches of my body like a piece of paper burned at the edges, but I had to let it go.

  I headed for the graveyard before going to the Bartelses’ place. I could see the spot, or what I thought was the right spot. I went around the fence, stumbling into gravestones and dodging crosses. If there was any place where I might hear her voice, it would be here. This church was where our wedding would have been, where I would have seen my bride at the altar in the veil she had been so happy about, the hint of a shy smile peeping out beneath it. The night was bright with stars and when I came to a heap of dirt, I started to look for a recently dug grave. I found it easily, the only one unmarked by a cross or flowers. A dog would have been given a better place to rest in the earth. I pounded my fists against the stone wall until the moss fell away, got on my knees, and prayed for a sign from my beloved so that I wouldn’t need to go to Lydia Bartels, a sign to tell me that she had found peace, a sign that I could turn back. I didn’t know why Rosalie had left the farm, who she had gone with, who had found her, or where. Why was she buried behind the churchyard? What priest had allowed that? Had there even been a priest? Rosalie wouldn’t have taken her own life, although that’s what they had been implying, and the way she’d been buried seemed to suggest it. But it couldn’t have happened that way. I was ashamed that I hadn’t been with her, hadn’t prevented this. How could we have been so far away from each other that I didn’t know she was in danger? It was unfathomable that all this had happened while I was sleeping or stoking the fire, going about my everyday chores. Why didn’t your thoughts turn to me? Why couldn’t I protect you? It was important to know what I’d been doing at the exact moment when Rosalie had departed this world. If I knew that, I would know how to search that moment for some kind of sign.

  No sign came, no answer—Rosalie was resolute. I spit on the church steps and took out my pocket watch. It was striking midnight; the spirit hour was beginning. It was time to go to Lydia Bartels’s house. I didn’t know anything about the woman except that she held her séances on Thursdays, and that she had inherited the Seventh Book of Moses from her mother on her deathbed. Leonida strongly disapproved of Lydia Bartels’s un-Christian activities, her folk beliefs, but Rosalie’s girlfriends had been to see her to ask about parents who’d disappeared or been sent to Siberia. They always went in pairs, not daring to go alone. I didn’t have anyone to ask to come with me, so I just had to strengthen myself with the Lord’s Prayer, although I knew that the sign of the cross or images of God weren’t allowed in Lydia’s house. I stood in the main street and pulled my hat tighter around my ears. I hadn’t shaved off the beard I’d grown in the woods, and I looked like an old man, so I didn’t think I would be recognized. I had considered getting a German uniform. The mail girl had told me that several Jews had bought them, and some even joined the service—there was no better way to hide. She’d laughed when she said that, her laugh dripping with fear like the rim of an overflowing bucket. I knew she was also talking about her own fiancé.

  THERE WAS ONE CANDLE burning in Lydia Bartels’s room. There was a plate on the floor with a line drawn across it. A large piece of paper with the words “Yes” and “No” written on it was placed under the plate. Under the paper was some kind of shiny fabric. Lydia Bartels sat on the floor with her palms upward, her eyes closed. Mrs. Vaik, who opened the door, asked who I wanted summoned. I had taken off my hat, turning its brim in my hands, and had just begun to speak when she interrupted me: “I don’t need to know any more than that. Unless your errand concerns gold.”

  “It
doesn’t.”

  “There are so many asking after gold coins, people looking for caches taken from their families, but the spirits aren’t interested in that sort of thing. Frivolous requests are tiresome to Her,” she said, nodding toward the darkened room. I went in and sat down in the circle with the others, my limbs numb, nervous sighs heavy in the air, a faint draft from the curtains, and then Lydia Bartels asked if a fair-haired man’s daughter was in the room. I heard a horrified gasp from my left. The plate moved. The circle breathed, hearts fluttered, barely contained hopes pounded, and I could smell the bitter scent of sweat, the sour smell of fear. The plate moved to the affirmative.

  The woman on my left started to cry.

  “She’s already left … there’s another here … Rosalie? Rosalie, are you here?”

  The plate moved back and forth on the paper as if it didn’t know which way to go. It stopped at the word “Yes.”

  “Are you all right, Rosalie?”

  The plate moved. No.

  “Did you come to a violent end?”

  The plate moved. Yes, yes.

  “You didn’t do anything to yourself, did you?”

  The plate moved. No.

  “Do you know who did this to you?”

  The plate moved. Yes.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  The plate remained motionless.

  “Rosalie, are you still there?”

  The plate didn’t move in either direction, just stirred a little.

  Mrs. Vaik came over and whispered that I could present my question. Before I had a chance to open my mouth, someone on my right got up quickly and backed toward the door, trembling and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. Lydia Bartels sagged toward the floor.

  “No!” The shout came out of my mouth. “Rosalie, come back!”

  Mrs. Vaik sprang to her feet and pushed the trembling creature out of the room. The door slammed, a lamp was lit. Lydia Bartels had opened her eyes. She pulled her shawl tighter around her and stood up, only to sit down again in a chair. Mrs. Vaik started to shoo the people out of the room. I was so shaken I didn’t care that everyone in the circle was staring at me. Some of them looked disappointed that the séance had been interrupted before their turns had come; others’ expressions told me that even those who didn’t know Rosalie would be talking about her after this. I stayed at the back of the group, leaning against the wall, where shadows from the lamp were dancing, then slid down to sit on the floor. I blinked and noticed myself staring at a forbidden photograph of former president Päts, shoved behind the bureau.

  “You have to go now,” Mrs. Vaik said.

  “Bring Rosalie back.”

  “It won’t work now. Come again next Thursday.”

  “Bring her back now!”

  I had to know more. Someone had told me that a tramp had been seen following the women in the village. I didn’t believe it, or the talk about Russian prisoners of war who served as laborers in the homes there. There weren’t any at the Armses’ place; it would have sent my mother around the bend to see Russians around or hear their language, although I had tried to convince them to take some on. The farm needed workers; the man of the house had a wooden leg, and I wasn’t enough help on my own. But the prisoners were watched by guards. The Germans weren’t.

  “Listen to me, young man. These sessions are very difficult. The spirits suck away all Her energy, because they have no energy of their own. It’s impossible to hold a séance like this more than once a week. Can’t you see how tired she is? Come into the kitchen, I’ll get you something hot to drink.”

  Mrs. Vaik brewed some grain coffee and poured half a glass of pungent liquor. I knew that she worked as a midwife, even for the bastards, and that she had bound the wounds of the men who went into the forest. If I couldn’t get help from her, I would be lost.

  “I’ll pay you to bring Rosalie back. I’ll pay anything.”

  “We don’t summon the spirits for money. Come back next Thursday.”

  “I can’t come here again—I’ve been seen. I have to find out who did this. Otherwise I’ll have no peace. And neither will Rosalie.”

  “Then you’ll have to find him yourself.”

  Mrs. Vaik’s gaze was as firm as a knot in a gut cord. I stared at the mousetrap in the corner of the kitchen. My hands, accustomed to activity, twitched under the table. I gulped from the glass so frantically that I knocked my teeth against the rim. The pain in my head sharpened, but I couldn’t shake the fear that I wouldn’t be able to contact Rosalie again and these women could. I’d also acted against Rosalie’s wishes. She said that you shouldn’t summon spirits into this world, that they should be left in their own realm. But I didn’t care. I’d left the ways of the church behind, they weren’t my ways anymore. The church hadn’t accepted Rosalie as one of its own.

  Mrs. Vaik went to look at the mousetrap by the cupboard, took a mouse out, and threw it into the slop bucket.

  “Was it any relief to learn that Rosalie wasn’t at peace?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “And yet you wanted to know. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come here. We’re only intermediaries. What comes of the knowledge, what it has to give, is not our responsibility. You didn’t want to know anything about your father, though.”

  I stared at her. She slowly shook her head, looking me straight in the eye.

  “On the train. He was an elderly man. It happened the moment he got on the train to Siberia. But you probably already guessed that.”

  I didn’t say anything. She was right. Rosalie had mentioned that a mouse had run under Mother’s bed in June, but I didn’t want to listen. Mrs. Vaik’s daughter Marta lumbered into the kitchen and started puttering at the stove. I didn’t need any extra ears listening, but at that moment I didn’t care.

  “Your bride came to a session with a friend,” Mrs. Vaik said. “Marta remembers the night well. There were too many people because some Germans had come unexpectedly and we couldn’t send them away.”

  “Rosalie was worried about your father and her friend asked about her brother, and also asked about her husband,” Marta continued. “Only your father appeared.” She swept the scarf off her head and I couldn’t bear the sympathy in her eyes.

  “Rosalie never told me about that. She didn’t approve of summoning spirits.”

  “She wanted to know,” Mrs. Vaik said. “And once she did know, she decided that it was better for you to have hope.”

  I drank another glass of the liquor, but I didn’t feel drunk. A mouse floated in the slop bucket. I had a plan, and Juudit could help me.

  AT THE CABIN, I started making preparations—packing my knapsack, cleaning my Walther, hardening my heart for what was to come and against what had already happened. The whole time, I could feel Rosalie’s little hand on the back of my neck, where she had laid it the last time we saw each other. No one had mentioned her name for a long time and the silence around her was losing its weight. People started to talk briskly about lands and soils and flowering borders as soon as they saw me, leaving no space between sentences for me to barge in with my uncomfortable words. Had the deportations in June made them so timid that they were all willing to shut their mouths as long as the Germans kept the Russians away? The Armses were happy that no one had been taken from them, that only my father and Juudit’s brother had been caught in the Russians’ net, but were they so happy that they would keep quiet even at the cost of their daughter’s life? Were they frightened that it would make the Germans nervous if they pestered them about Simson Farm? Had they decided that Juudit was an unsuitable daughter-in-law because of her brother, because her mother was trying to get Johan’s house back? Had Edgar used his mysterious comings and goings with the Germans to buy Mother protection at the Armses’ place? How far were these people willing to go? I didn’t know them anymore. I could grieve for my father later, continue my work documenting the depredations of the Bolsheviks to honor his memory, but first I would find the people responsible
for Rosalie’s death. It was time for action. The time for waiting was over.

  “What are you up to? You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you?”

  Edgar stood in the doorway like a harbinger of doom, the wind fluttering his coat like black wings. I already regretted telling him what I’d heard on my way to the cabin: the neighbor’s brat had seen a German coming from the direction of the Armses’ place the night that Rosalie left. Or at least a man in a German uniform—it had been dark and the boy hadn’t seen his face. Was it a stranger after Leonida’s tins of lard? I didn’t think so.

  “Whoever it is, he’s running free and all you can think about is your business schemes.”